Somewhere mid November, I was preparing to go to sleep and turned the lights off. A few seconds later, the hard and costly earned darkness of our bedroom was interrupted by a flash. Thunder in November, I thought. How strange and exciting. As an old lover of thunderstorms, I got up, and disclosed the heavy curtain. I never got to look at the night sky. In front of me, hanging from the 20 something floor there was a cascade - or maybe the more appropriate word to describe the object is blanket – of white lights, pouring over windows and balconies, tearing apart the already miserable residues of darkness. The hair raising artefact was strobing light at high speed, in crescendos that exhausts your amygdala synapsis in less than a minute, to culminate with thunderlike high voltage flashes leaving the spectator blinded and dazzled, with the urge to cover eyes with whatever at hand and escape o lie down catatonic.

In the days after more of these grotesque hangings of harshness appeared. I ended up putting objects on the curtains’ corners to keep them as close as possible to the walls and to let as little light as possible in the calmness and darkness of our home.

It’s been years since December arrives in November, loud with illumination, relentless in its insistence on visibility. Not the tentative kind that waits for dawn, but an assertive brightness engineered to insist on itself. Streets glow before the afternoon has had a chance to dim. Shop windows spill cold light onto pavements.

This is not the gentle darkness of winter as it once was in my childhood, like a slow dimming that invited rest and inwardness. What we now inhabit is an overexposed season. For every layer of glare we add, we lose a layer of depth.

There is a strange dissonance in this overexposure. The world feels washed out, overlit to the point where subtleties blur. What should feel festive instead feels anesthetizing, a steady hum of stimulation that the nervous system cannot properly metabolize. Simmel’s century old description of the blasé attitude as a survival response to sensory saturation still feels contemporary as December seems to replicate that condition on purpose: the manufactured glow, the relentless visuals, the expectation that brightness alone will generate feeling.

I have been paying attention to the quality of this brightness: how it demands cheerfulness rather than offering warmth, and how it interrupts rather than soothes. I have also been paying closer attention to the quality of this light. Not just aesthetically, but physiologically and psychologically. Artificial illumination now saturates our lives to such a degree that darkness itself has become unfamiliar, suspicious. In winter, when the body expects a slowing down, an inward turn, we are instead flooded with visual stimuli that insist on continuity and cheer as if it were June. The result is not comfort, but fatigue and irritability.

From a physiological perspective, this is not incidental. Chronic exposure to artificial light disrupts circadian rhythms, suppresses melatonin, fractures the natural architecture of rest and wakefulness. The body expects winter to dim, so when it doesn’t, imbalance hits.

Wintering

I’ve been returning to Katherine May’s concept of wintering. Not as metaphor alone, but as a practice. Wintering asks us to stop resisting the dark, to allow withdrawal without shame, to accept that there are seasons in life—personal and collective—when contraction is not a failure but a necessity. It reframes darkness as a condition for restoration rather than a problem to be solved.

In the current moment, wintering feels less like a personal choice and more like a survival skill. The world is too loud, too illuminated, too fractured to be metabolized at full exposure. Wintering offers a way to remain present without demanding resolution. It allows grief to exist without being rushed toward optimism. It resists the pressure to produce coherence where there is none.

Lightkeeping

And yet, wintering alone is not enough. Turning inward without attention to the world risks becoming insulation. This is where my idea of lightkeeping emerges — not as a contradiction to wintering, but as its companion. Not as optimism, and certainly not as consolation.

Lightkeeping is the discipline of keeping sensitivity and attention alive in conditions designed to erode them. It is the refusal to let artificial brightness numb us, and at the same time it’s the refusal to let global darkness annihilate us.

This requires a big deal of discernment because not all light is equal.

The excess brightness of December often functions as distraction and a visual anesthetic against the discomfort. It encourages us to confuse stimulation with warmth, and visibility with care.

Real light, by contrast, is quieter. It does not overwhelm. It orients.

Often, lightkeeping looks embarrassingly small. A single lamp turned on in the early morning, allowing a room to emerge slowly rather than all at once. An intentional pause at dusk, letting the day end without immediately replacing it with screens and overhead light. A quiet corner of the house where illumination is soft enough to allow dreaming. A conversation where pain is not redirected, solved, or softened prematurely.

These are not aesthetic choices. They are regulatory acts as they help the body remain capable of feeling. And feeling, in a time of collective grief, is not optional. It is what keeps us human.

Wintering and lightkeeping meet here, exactly in the restoration of rhythm. Darkness where darkness belongs. Light where it is needed. Neither excessive, nor absent.

I want to frame the lightkeeping as an ethical dimension that matters deeply at this moment. I write from the position of a privileged person, in what results as very dark times worldwide. No, wintering cannot be purely inward. This darkness we are living alongside is not only seasonal or personal; it is global and devastatingly concrete.

Another December and January unfolded against a backdrop of constant devastation that cannot be softened by seasonal rituals. The contrast is unbearable at times.

Entire populations are living through unrelenting darkness: war zones where night does not bring rest but danger; cities reduced to rubble; families displaced, erased, grieving futures that will never arrive. Violence is ongoing, systemic, and increasingly normalized. Imperial logics continue to decide which lives are protected, which are sacrificed, and which are rendered invisible.

We are witnessing suffering in real time — and also witnessing the unevenness of that witnessing. The double standards in global empathy. The hierarchies of grief. The selective outrage. Some deaths are named and mourned; others are explained away, justified, or quietly ignored. Language has become contested terrain. Even compassion is rationed.

All is mediated through screens that deliver devastation alongside advertisements and holiday campaigns.

The psychological dissonance is immense.

Lightkeepers

Many of us live suspended between two impossible positions: the desire to stay awake to the world, and the need to protect ourselves from being undone by it. We are suspended between the urge to witness and the urge to shut down. The result is often numbness, a kind of moral exhaustion. We scroll, we read, we absorb, and at some point the system overloads.

In such conditions, numbness can feel like a survival strategy. But it comes at a cost. When perception dulls, so does moral clarity. The danger of overstimulation is not only exhaustion, but desensitization — the slow erosion of our capacity to distinguish, to grieve, to respond.

It’s destroying our capacity to be lightkeepers.

A lightkeeper is not someone who seeks comfort. A lightkeeper is someone who protects sensitivity. Someone who resists the flattening effect of constant glare—sensory, emotional, ideological. Someone who understands that clarity often emerges not from more light, but from the right kind of light.

Being a lightkeeper is demanding: it asks us to remain human in conditions that reward indifference.

I started writing this letter back in December and only finished it yesterday. I overestimated my ability to juggle everyday life, intensive study, and other passions like reading and writing. It took me three months to complete, but it’s never too late to send you my hopes and good wishes for the year ahead.

May your days in this 2026 be blessed by lightkeepers; may you be the much needed lightkeeper to someone.

Related Letters

The blasé attitude is a fascinating phenomenon: learning about it can suddenly make you aware of your surroundings in a way you hadn’t been before. I wrote about it back in November 2024.

Every month I try to ask a question that feels honest enough to open something in people, but not so heavy that it closes the door before anything can be said. I’m still ambivalent about the idea of keeping monthly themes, but I couldn’t pass up the opportunity to explore further the concept of Memory as fiction, which I introduced in November’s monthly letter. So, this time, the question was about returning to familiar places:

When you return to familiar places, do you find comfort in the echoes of who you once were—or do you feel haunted by the mismatch between then and now?

I loved your notes. Some made me laugh and will stay with me for a long time. What amazes me every time is how no one is trying to impress anyone. Everything feels like someone leaning on a kitchen table and telling the truth for a moment.

I wanted to share them the way they reached me: unforced, unpolished, full of that human mix of humor, confusion, nostalgia, and the strange comfort of realizing, “I felt this too, and I don’t know what to do with it either.” I’ve collected them here in that same spirit—not to answer the question, but to let the simple and uncomplicated sit next to each other for the time being.

“

Hey,

Your newsletter on memory made me curious, so I went to this café I used to love, to go “back in time”. Except the whole time I sat there, I kept thinking, did I really enjoy this or was I just pretending I did at the time?

Which led to the much bigger question of how much of my twenties was actually me, and how much was me trying to impress people.

Anyway, the coffee was bad and the chair was uncomfortable and I stayed there for an hour because apparently I enjoy suffering in familiar places.

No moral to this. Just reporting live from my own brain.

—S.A.

“

Hi Natasha,

I went back to Lisbon after three years away. Everything looked familiar but felt… thinner? Like someone turned off the contrast of the city. The place where I had breakfast every Sunday is gone. The woman who used to sell flowers outside the metro wasn’t there…I kept waiting for familiarity and excitement to hit me, but it didn’t.

It’s so odd to mourn a place that still exists.

—Claudia

“

My childhood bedroom is now a storage room. That’s the best metaphor for adulthood I’ve ever encountered.

—Miriam

“

Hi all,

I’m not sure how to put this, but I saw my reflection in a shop window today and didn’t recognize myself for a second. Not in a “who is that?” total blackout way. More like, Oh… that’s the person everyone else sees. It startled me. I don’t feel like that person. Inside I’m always… younger? Sadder? Messier?

Just wanted to share it here.

—Anonymous

“

Your question made me think about something slightly different: I don’t return to places as much as I return to moods.

There’s a certain heaviness that shows up every winter (maybe it’s a seasonal depression). I recognize it instantly, like “Oh, here we are again.” And each year I think I’ll be stronger or wiser or better prepared, but I’m not. I just learn to sit next to it without making a scene.

—H

“

People love saying “You haven’t changed at all!”.

I hear it every time I’m home(?), and every time I want to say, “Actually, I’ve changed in ways you can’t see. I carry a different kind of tiredness now. I’ve learned to want things I never thought I’d want”.

But instead I just laugh and mumble a thank you as if it’s a compliment. I don’t know if I feel comfort or discomfort in those moments. Is being perceived as “not changed” a compliment after all?

—

Thank you

To those who shared their thoughts: thank you for your vulnerability. To those who read them: thank you for holding these stories with care. If something here resonated with you, or if you feel moved to share your own note or letter, I’d love to include your voice in the next collective letter.

Letterbox

Until then, may these words remind you that whatever you are carrying, somewhere in this chaotic world, someone else is carrying a similar weight.

Month’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Saturday, December 13

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

Thursday, December 18

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

1. Monthly paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it positively impacting your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This gives you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

2. Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Cafe will remain free, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Pay for one gathering

Note: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

And just like that, the aircraft took off as if it were made of feathers. It was a late-night flight, and the darkness thickened as we gained height. Somewhere mid-flight, I looked out of the window, and if it weren’t for the motor’s rumble, I could have sworn we were suspended in the void—motionless between the deepness of the Adriatic below and the expansiveness of the universe above. I scrutinized the blackness, looking for something. I don’t believe we are alone in the universe, so I guess my scrutiny held the repressed excitement of noticing something up there, something we don’t get to see down here.

The next day, I woke up at my parents’ home. The homeland spread behind the apartment’s walls, and I was about to step into a reality I had deserted for more than six years.

The bureaucracy is an entangled mystery, and going from point A to point B means moving from point C to point E, and from there to point B. You need to understand information and also be able to retain and retrieve it from memory.

And I got lost. Somewhere between point E and point B, I predictably got lost. I know the city—I lived, studied, and worked there for years—and yet, I got lost.

I don’t remember the last time I laughed that much. It was raining, I was hungry and thirsty, and my mind ached for coffee. I stood in the rain, between the emaciated river and some kitschy buildings, laughing as if there were no tomorrow. The disorientation was so dazzling that even my own brain interpreted it as a satire.

The city had changed so much that it eluded all my well-rooted mental maps. But as I made my way through the new urban landscape, a pressing thought demanded attention: Waaaaiiit, where do you place that man selling old books? Remember, he had those foldable deckchairs where he displayed rare books from the Yugoslav era. Find his spot now, place him on the new map, so you don’t forget him.

Basically, my brain was preparing to overwrite a new memory, or to underwrite an old one—a remarkable adaptive mechanism, letting old and new coexist.

Interesting, I thought. I’d studied this before, but at the time, I wasn’t sure I fully understood it.

The psychology of invention

As I write this, when I think of that spot, I see two new buildings divided by a narrow street. A couple of seconds later, on the corner, a man sits on a small folding chair in front of an impromptu bookstand. Sometimes, the scene behind him is the old one: an abandoned area and a bridge. Then the new buildings emerge, the bridge partially hidden. I can still tell they are from different eras—his clothes anachronistic against the geometry of the new facades.

Psychologists have a word for the way memory deceives us—confabulation. It sounds clinical, almost cold, but it captures something deeply human: our tendency to fill in gaps, to invent continuity when fragments don’t fit. We don’t mean to lie; we simply need our story to make sense.

Frederic Bartlett, a century ago, spoke about schema theory: remembering is never simple retrieval but a reconstruction guided by the expectations and frameworks of the present. The mind doesn’t store perfect copies of the past—it keeps sketches, outlines, unfinished drafts that it revises each time we recall them. Each act of remembering is an act of invention.

In a way, that’s what my mind was doing—negotiating between two incompatible worlds.

Philosopher Henri Bergson thought of memory as duration—not a static archive, but a living flow between past and present. The self, he said, moves like time does—continuous, never fully divisible. In fact, when I try to recall the bookseller, I’m not going backward. I’m expanding the present to include what it once contained. Memory doesn’t live behind me; it lives through me.

The narrative self

Memory is also a storyteller. Psychologists distinguish between episodic memory—vivid, sensory recollections of individual moments—and autobiographical memory, which threads those episodes into a coherent narrative, a story that makes sense of our lives. In this sense, the self is a living manuscript, constantly edited, revised, and reinterpreted.

The man with the books, the rain, the river—each fragment becomes a scene in a story I am always in the process of writing. My past is not fixed; it’s performed anew each time I recall it, shaped by the person I am now and the person I once was. The narrative self is never simply what happened, but what I need to remember to remain coherent, and to feel continuous.

And perhaps that’s why, even when I stood in the rain, lost in a city I once knew by heart, I didn’t feel despair. I felt wonder. My confusion was not a failure of memory but proof of its creativity. My mind was trying to reconcile two worlds—the one that was and the one that is—and in doing so, it invented a third: a private geography where both coexist, and a new story emerges—part fact, part fiction.

When I finally found my way to my final destination, drenched and exhilarated, I thought about how much we rely on the stability of memory to feel real. Yet the self, as Conway and Pleydell-Pearce wrote, is maintained not through accuracy, but through coherence. We remember not to preserve the past, but to preserve the idea of who we are.

I guess that’s why the memory of the bookseller keeps returning. It’s not him I’m trying to locate, but myself—the one who used to stop by his stand, the one who once belonged to that city. And who knows if the man with the books has ever really existed as I remember him? Maybe he was a composite of strangers, a symbolic guardian of something I needed to preserve.

Related Letter

This letter continues the exploration of themes introduced in previous pieces, where the concept of temporal misalignment intersects with our shifting identities.

November’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Thursday, November 6

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

Saturday, November 15

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

Paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it nourishing for your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This grants you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Café will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Pay for one gathering

NOTE: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

Community

I’ve set up a WhatsApp community so we can stay connected in an app many of us already use every day. You can choose the space that feels right for you—just quiet updates in the Announcements feed, or to step into the Chat group if you’d like to connect with others.

Connect on WhatsApp

As I opened the letters this month, I kept noticing how much of life happens in contradiction. The prompt question worked its magic, it’s amazing to see these different examples of life’s push and pull:

What contradiction do you live with every day? What part of your life feels like it pulls you in two directions at once?

We want closeness but need distance. We love people who also hurt us. We crave change but cling to what’s familiar. Pride and guilt, hope and resignation… the list could go on.

Most of us live somewhere in between — not entirely one thing or the other, just carrying on with the tension. Sometimes we call it confusion. Most days, we move through these opposites without naming them; it feels ordinary, even automatic.

This month’s letters don’t offer clarity — just a little company in that in-between.

“

The first thing that came to my mind when I read your question was: I love my mother, but I don’t like her.
Even writing that feels ungrateful, but it’s the truth.

I actually resent her. There’s something about her — the way she speaks, the way she moves around a room and that takes me back to a version of myself I don’t want to meet again. Her way of interrupting, the way she sighs when I talk — all of it pulls me straight back to being a kid who never got it right. A small, uneasy child, always trying to say the right thing, to earn her warmth.

I thought growing up would fix that. That once I had my own life, my own home, I could stop caring so much about her moods. But it’s still there — the same knot in my stomach when she calls, the same panic before I answer. It’s like an old reflex I can’t unlearn. She’ll say something like, “You sound tired,” and somehow it feels like a judgment. Or she’ll remind me how I used to forget my coat as a child, as if that explains everything about me now. Every word of hers seems to reach backward, undoing years of distance I tried to build.

When I visit her, I catch myself going into old patterns like being agreeable, minimizing myself, pretending not to notice the small criticisms that she spits on me. I go back to being ten years old without realizing it. It’s strange that even now, as an adult, I can’t seem to unhook from that.

I know she tried her best, and I know her life wasn’t easy, that she carried her own disappointments and loneliness. But knowing doesn’t stop the ache, it doesn’t make her voice sound any softer.

It’s not that I hate her. I see her loneliness, the way she fills her days with routines, how she still tries to be needed. But being around her makes me feel small and guilty. Guilty for what, I don’t even know. Maybe one day I’ll understand her better, but for now, I just try to love her from far enough away that I can still breathe.

—RM

“

What a beautiful and profound question.

I’d say the biggest contradiction I live with every day is being, on one hand, a woman who is expected to be highly productive and professionally accomplished — to have a place in the corporate world, to align with a company’s values, to be seen as an essential part of a large economic system that expects results for the business, for society, for the country, and for the family.

But at the same time, I’m also a mother raising children in an international context — often with little or no help — juggling countless responsibilities: school, friends, sports, extracurricular activities, and more.

For me, this is a profound daily contradiction: we are expat moms, but we are also women, professionals, friends, daughters. And we constantly feel pulled between the desire to achieve and the need to be fully present for the people we love.

—Adriana

“

Each day, I find myself asking how to “properly” approach the writing process. There’s a contradiction at the heart of it: I long to sit with my ideas as long as they need, yet the longer I stay with one, the more I feel mired, as if in muddy water. I want my writing to be swift—but also slow enough to ferment into something rich. What I find most fascinating about any creative process it that there are no prescriptions, no universal recipes that can be handed out and secretly applied. It feels frustrating not to have found my “own” recipe yet, even after so many years of writing, but perhaps I’m fixated on a wrong thing.

— Anonymous

“

I found an old grocery list in my coat pocket: bread, yogurt, carrots, batteries, soap. I don’t even remember writing it. It made me weirdly emotional, seeing my own handwriting listing such small, ordinary needs.

There’s something comforting about how life keeps asking for the same things, no matter what’s happening on certain higher levels: food, cleanliness, something that still works.

—

Thank you

To those who shared their thoughts: thank you for your vulnerability. To those who read them: thank you for holding these stories with care. If something here resonated with you, or if you feel moved to share your own note or letter, I’d love to include your voice in the next collective letter.

Letterbox

Until then, may these words remind you that whatever you are carrying, somewhere in this chaotic world, someone else is carrying a similar weight.

Natasha

November’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Thursday, November 6

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

Saturday, November 15

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

1. Monthly paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it positively impacting your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This gives you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

2. Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Cafe will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Pay for one gathering

Note: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

Where is the Colosseum? Why are there so many ugly Soviet-style buildings with peeling facades?

I was 22 and traveling solo for the first time in my life. It’s the era of the early internet—expensive and a privilege—no social media, and printed brochures for information. Google Street View is more than a decade ahead. Globalization is there, but still hasn’t pervaded certain areas like those of South-Eastern Europe. What I have in mind when I think of Italy, is what I see in RAI series and ads, travel guides, and my Uni books. It’s a very curated and polished version of Italy and Italians, the cream, the flower, the best of the peninsula.

As I look from the train window, and later, as I walk the streets of a city unknown to the tourist’s mind, I feel deceived. Where are the piazzette with people enjoying their espresso while a Topolino joyfully joins the scene? All I see is a lot of traffic and bleak bars with no tables outside, no sitting space inside, and a very hurrying and stressful way of drinking coffee. People are shouting and pressing you against the counter, and no one tells you that you need to go to the opposite side of the bar, pay, show the receipt to the barman and only then have your espresso.

So I wait and wait and when it’s my turn, all eyes are on me as I’m the only one without a receipt, asking for an espresso, as the barman shouts nervously and points somewhere on the other side. And what an espresso! It’s only one drop of liquid, so tiny it’s almost ridiculous.

My gut drops—this is terrible, I want to go home.

I discovered the gap between my polished expectations and the raw reality I found. The Colosseum wasn’t around every corner. The espresso was a drop, not a cup. Mozzarella and pesto tasted strange, not divine. I didn’t know it at the time, but what I was experiencing was not just culture shock—it was my brain’s heuristics at work.

Today I remember this with a laugh. Until a few months ago, I didn’t have a name or a rational explanation for the mismatch between my expectations and the reality I found.

Anchoring and adjustment

Now I do. It was about my reference point—the mental starting line from which I judged all of Italy. That reference point was not built from lived experience, but from glossy representations. Naturally, it failed me.

Psychologists describe this as anchoring and adjustment. We begin with an anchor—our first expectation, our internal reference point. Then we are supposed to adjust toward reality. But the adjustment doesn’t come easily: it requires conscious effort. Without awareness, the mind stays glued to its anchor, refusing to budge.

That’s why adjusting is the real work of expat life. It takes willpower to let your initial anchor dissolve, to say: “My idea of Italy was incomplete, let me rewrite it.” Anchoring and adjustment is, in a way, the essence of being an expat: noticing the gap between brochure and street corner, and learning, step by step, to close it.

Representativeness heuristic

When we meet someone new, our brain asks: What does this person resemble? We judge them by how closely they fit a mental prototype.

A lifetime ago, when I lived in a multicultural household, my German roommate once looked at me with genuine astonishment and asked: “Do you have bikes in Macedonia?” and later “I didn’t know you could buy such clothes in Macedonia.” She wasn’t being cruel or impolite. Her mind simply had no information to work with. She relied on what little she could picture about my country—goats, perhaps, but no bikes. She had no data about Macedonia, so she leaned on the only reference point available: a fuzzy image of “the Balkans” as savage, distant, ravaged by wars. For her, me on a bike in such a context was extravagant.

I, on the other hand, was shocked at how messy she was. Messy! Her room looked like a crime scene. My mental brochure said Germans were tidy, disciplined, punctual—engineered by nature to be organized. My expectation wasn’t personal, it was representative: she was German, therefore she should fit the image in my head. So when I saw her chaos, my mind didn’t know where to file it.

That’s what representativeness heuristic do: they compress whole nations into single traits.

This heuristic explains how stereotypes are born: in an attempt to make sense of the unknown our brain simplifies the unknown by forcing it into a category. These categories are not random; they are distilled from media, history, jokes and anecdotes. Once installed, they force everyone into caricatures. For me, the Germans were stern and precise because that’s how they were portrayed in movies and textbooks. For my roommate, the Balkans were poor and backward because that was the story available to her.

Availability heuristic

In the nineties, it was Albanians. In the 2000s, Romanians. Now it’s Arabs or Africans. In Italy, every decade has had its scapegoat—the nationality “known” for crime and delinquency.

This is the availability heuristic: we estimate reality based on what comes easily to mind. And what comes easily to mind is what we see repeatedly reported in the media. What we usually see reported in the media is meant to shape public opinion. What is meant to shape the public opinion is conceived in a way to draw towards one or another ideology, usually to profit a certain political agenda. The more prominent and repeated certain news are, the more likely they will activate an availability heuristic.

So if I say “Arab” and the first thing that flashes in your mind is danger or crime instead of desert, camels, or arabesques, ask yourself why. Chances are, it’s the availability heuristic at work—a shortcut turned into a calcified belief.

Confirmation bias

Once we hold a belief, we start noticing only what confirms it. That calcified belief from the example above will make news about crimes committed by certain nationalities jump out, while stories that contradict it will barely register. This is the sneaky power of confirmation bias: it doesn’t just distort our perception, it convinces us we’re right.

My Spanish friend with long, dark, curly hair, always loud, always the life of the group, ready to party? “Typical olè Spaniard!” I thought. My Russian friend plunging into a frozen pond in January? “Typical Russian endurance!” These weren’t neutral observations. They were confirmation biases. I picked out the traits that matched the stereotypes I already carried, as if they were proof that my mental image of “the Spanish” and “the Russians” was accurate.

The other Spanish girl I knew—introverted, hippie, soft-spoken—was immediately filed under “exception.” Atypical. Not representative. The delicate Russian roommate who cooked for me the most delicious soup? Also an exception. Forgettable, because she didn’t fit the icy-strong-Russian mold.

That’s how confirmation bias works: we keep reinforcing the prototype by dismissing everything that doesn’t fit. Each exception is pushed aside, labeled unimportant, so the stereotype can stand taller, stronger, untouched.

Why our brains do this

Heuristics are mental shortcuts. They help us predict quickly, orient ourselves, and avoid analysis-paralysis. They keep us moving through the day without collapsing from decision fatigue. They’re efficient, but also lazy. They trade nuance for speed. Instead of updating the picture, the brain grabs the nearest reference point, fills in the blanks, and calls it truth.

That works well enough when you’re picking a brand of soap—or instinctively jumping back from something that moves like a snake in the grass. But it becomes reductive when applied to people, leading to systematic errors—that is, biases.

As expats, we live inside this paradox. The problem isn’t that we’re maliciously wrong about each other—it’s that we begin with almost nothing, yet insist on building entire worlds from scraps. No, it’s not malice; it’s the mechanism of poor reference points.

The good news is that mechanisms can be retrained. One encounter at a time, we feed the mind new data, fresh anchors. The espresso that once felt like a thimble becomes exactly enough. The pesto that once tasted like grass turns into comfort food. And the prototypes slowly, slowly, begin to loosen their grip: Germans can be messy, Spaniards can be shy, Russians can be fragile, and yes—Macedonians can ride bikes.

Month’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Thursday, October 9

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

Saturday, October 18

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

Paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it nourishing for your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This grants you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Café will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Pay for one gathering

NOTE: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

Community

I’ve set up a WhatsApp community so we can stay connected in an app many of us already use every day. You can choose the space that feels right for you—just quiet updates in the Announcements feed, or to step into the Chat group if you’d like to connect with others.

Connect on WhatsApp

I’m almost emotional to share the first Collective Letter, as I wasn’t sure if anyone would respond to the call. When I first put out the idea, it felt like an experiment in sharing — and in overcoming the resistance that often comes with it. But as the first notes arrived, I realized it was, above all, an exercise in active listening.

The question I set as a prompt for September was an opening one, and I’m not sure if everyone who sent their note followed it. I know I kind of did — my current mood is one of rage and resentment. Here it is:

If someone were truly listening without judgment, what would you dare to say?

Some of what follows is raw, some tender, others weary. These letters don’t try to fix or solve; they simply share what it feels like to be human right now — laying bare what usually hides between grocery lists, bus rides, and late-night thoughts.

“

Dear collective,
I spent an hour today in what used to be my daughter’s bedroom. She moved out two months ago, but her posters are still on the walls, her books half-packed in boxes, her jumper draped over the chair like she’ll be back any second. Except she won’t.

I sat on the floor and let the quiet fill my soul. For years, that room was a battlefield of slammed doors, mess and loud music, and I used to dream about the peace I’d have when she was gone. Now the silence feels unbearable. I catch myself standing in the doorway, looking for her.

No one tells you that parenting is a series of goodbyes, each one smaller than the last until the big one finally comes. I’m proud of her, but God, I miss the mess.

—Simona

“

I don’t know how to keep up anymore. The bills eat my salary before I even touch it. I’m embarrassed to admit it to friends — everyone looks like they’re thriving. But I’m not. I’m barely managing.

—Anonymous

“

I used to be a nerd and quite an intense person in high school, and that connected me to a very truthful core of my being — one avid for intensity in intellectual conversations but also in the depth of feelings. Over time, that sparkle became very much numbed, and I am still mapping all the causes for this along the journey.

The main idea I’d like to share is that some of us become enveloped in a tiring fog as we grow into adulthood, and that a way back to vitality is through the clarity of our quirks, and then fully living them, as we want them to be lived.

—

“

In these very dark times, as we witness a genocide broadcast live, an episode from some years ago often comes to mind — about racism, discrimination, and privilege.

Years ago, an older lady sat in front of me on the tram. She was visibly upset and asked if I had two euros, explaining that someone on the metro had just stolen her wallet and she had no money to get home on her way back. I gave her my only two euros. She took the gesture as an invitation to confidence and began sharing her views on extracomunitari (non-EU citizens, that’s it), convinced that a brute extracomunitario had stolen her wallet (note: I’m white, with Mediterranean-Italian features, and I speak Italian almost at a native level).

‘We don’t need them here. We should expel everyone and close the borders. They are animals, not people. They’ve stolen our money, our jobs, our homes.’

I stayed silent, partly because her vitriolic rant took me by surprise.

When my stop came, I stood up and, as calmly as I could, said:

‘Signora, I’m an extracomunitaria, and I just gave you my last two euros so you could get home. Not all extracomunitari are the same, just as not all Italians are.’

I wished her a good day and stepped off the tram.

—

Thank you

To those who shared their thoughts: thank you for your vulnerability. To those who read them: thank you for holding these stories with care. If something here resonated with you, or if you feel moved to share your own note or letter, I’d love to include your voice in the next Collective Letter.

Letterbox

Until then, may these words remind you that whatever you are carrying, somewhere in this chaotic world, someone else is carrying a similar weight.

Natasha

October’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Thursday, October 9

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

Saturday, October 18

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

1. Monthly paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it positively impacting your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This gives you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

2. Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Cafe will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Monthly gathering

Note: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

Mid-July, during one of the Milan’s roaring heat waves, I sat down on the floor facing our home studio bookcase and opened all its doors—a purge was overdue. A hateful task, no doubt. It took me two days to empty the space of useless items and faded documents. I threw out two boxes of paper and old receipts. Most of the time, though, I was reading scraps from half-finished notebooks, sorting business cards worth keeping (?) in 2025, and looking at decade-old printed pictures.

Then I found it. I didn’t even remember it existed.

A handwritten letter.

A Macedonian friend of mine was telling me about her little baby girl, in November 2008. Afterwards, I went hunting for more letters, but I realized hers was the last handwritten one I’d received since then. A couple of postcards from a Dutch friend turned up—but that was it.

I kept asking myself what had happened to cut off the flow of letters and postcards so suddenly. Emails? No—we’d had email since 2000, and it surely reduced the volume and frequency of handwritten mail, but it didn’t kill it overnight.

Then it dawned on me: Facebook happened.

I opened my profile in the fall of 2007, but the real surge came a couple of years later, when even the old lady next door sent me a friend request. Facebook was the final blow to everything analogical: time, process, outcome.

A couple of weeks before that studio purge, while on holiday, my son befriended another boy his age. They played together, bonded naturally. When his mom asked permission to keep them in touch via an instant messaging app, I saw instead a chance for my son to experience the magic of having a pen pal. For a moment, this woman my age looked shocked—anachronism rarely goes unnoticed—but then, after a heartfelt laugh, she agreed.

The notion of handwritten letters was knocking on my door in the summer of 2025.

It wasn’t the first time I’d thought of how amazing it was to send and receive a handwritten letter. I’ve missed the ritual dearly, but each time dismissed the idea as ridiculous, outdated.

Back in the nineties, I was a moderate sender and receiver of letters. Friends, pen pals, lovers—all found their way into my mailbox. An unknown address was nothing more than a name and a number you couldn’t look up on a screen. Every home had—usually next to the phone—a leather-bound address book, its pages neatly filled with the names and addresses of friends and relatives, near and far. It was a household necessity, a quiet proof of the richness of a family’s social life.

On a couple of occasions in the late eighties, I received books. I don’t remember exactly how it worked, but my parents also received a letter with an unknown address, instructing them to send a children’s book. It was a chain that had been going for years. You never knew when it would “hit” you again. My parents were less enthusiastic—the expense of bigger, heavier envelopes was not trivial—but for me those unexpected deliveries were a treasure. I kept the envelopes for years as relics: containers of pure, unfiltered joy.

Letter writing was, in truth, a whole choreography of presence.

It was about the body, the ritual, the longing and excitment it created between two people.

There was the physical effort of it. Back then, everything about it asked something of the body. You wrote by hand, often twice—first in a draft, then again on clean paper. Your wrist ached, your fingers smudged with ink. If you wanted to add a photo, you first had to bring the roll to a photo lab, wait days for development, and then choose which image to slip into the envelope. And at the end of it all, you carried the letter yourself to the post office, waited in line, endured the clerk's glance as the letter disappeared from your hands, and was weighed on a scale.

There was care, too—an almost ceremonial attention. Choosing the pen that felt right that day, the paper thick enough to hold your thoughts, sometimes even perfumed pages that betrayed a teenage sense of drama. You had to think not only of what to write but of how much—a letter has limits, a page has edges. The envelope had to be weighed in your palm, the address double-checked, your own return address added neatly in the corner.

And then there was the mental theater of it all—the invisible stage on which everything unfolded. The long, drawn-out waiting, the silence between sending and receiving. Days, weeks, sometimes months without knowing whether it had arrived, whether it touched the person the way you hoped. There were no instant clarifications, no quick emojis to soften a phrase.

When a reply did come, your nervous system slowed down to decipher someone else’s handwriting, letting imagination fill the gaps between the curves of their letters. As you read, you could almost hear their voice. Sometimes you would pause before opening the envelope, savoring the moment of not knowing yet. The envelope itself was part of the story: the faint creases from its journey, the impatience in your fingers palpating its thickness as you tore it open, the rush of adrenaline when an unexpected flutter of small papers or photographs, tucked inside like secret companions, fell into your lap—making the letter feel alive.

Perhaps that’s why, when I suggested to my son’s new friend’s mother that the boys try writing letters, I felt something stir in me. It was like brushing against a nearly forgotten ritual—proof that connection can still move by hand, on paper, across distance and time. Watching my son carefully shape his words, knowing they would travel folded in an envelope, I realized what I wanted for him was more than just correspondence. I wanted him to taste the slow magic of letters—their way of making you imagine, of leaving you suspended in not knowing, of teaching you the sweetness of longing until the reply finally arrives.

Maybe that’s why, years later, the idea returns to me—not as nostalgia, but as possibility and hope. If a single handwritten letter could carry such a presence, how much could we regain if we let it return—even in new, digital forms?

It can look intimidating at first.

In a way, having a pen pal is a long-term commitment. It also raises some privacy and safety concerns—the world has changed drastically in the last fifteen years. I spent some time researching what today’s technology can offer in terms of sending a handwritten letter effortlessly and safely, without losing the personal touch and the excitement. I almost got carried away with the possibilities, but then I reminded myself of the promise I made recently: start small, the smallest possible.

So maybe this can take shape in two ways.

Firstly, I’m curious to see if a simple Google sheet can do the job initially, for what I call a collective letter. The name is unambiguous: a letter written by many hands, published at the end of each month. Leave your one-sentence note, or a longer letter through the form currently serving as a letterbox (you’ll find a small prompt or question there, which you may or may not use as a starting point). Sign it—or remain anonymous if you wish—and at the end of the month, I’ll stitch them together into a discourse and send it back into the world, here at Eirene Cafe.

The second path is for those who feel ready to step further: a more courageous experience—the handwritten exchange. Nothing complicated. Through a protected database (contact me to get access), you can add your address and a short bio, and from there, choose—or be chosen—for a pen pal connection. No algorithm, no instant replies—just the slow unfolding of presence, trust, and discovery.

Both paths hold the same intention: to connect. One is light yet powerful, a shared voice sent out into the digital world. The other is slower, more personal, demanding effort and courage, but offering the unmatched intimacy of ink and paper.

If you are curious, willing, or simply longing for the slowness, the care, the embodied presence of each other through paper and ink, consider this your invitation.

A letter, after all, begins with one person deciding to sit down, pick up a pen, and write.

September’s Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Wednesday, September 17

9.30 - 11.00 CET

Online

Saturday, September 27

10.00 - 11.30 CET

Online

How to join?

1. Monthly paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Cafe and find it positively impacting your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This gives you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

2. Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Cafe will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Monthly gathering

Note: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

It starts quietly. A friend sends a meme. I laugh, but something tightens. The image carries the humor of a context I’ve since stepped out of. It’s not that I don’t understand—it’s that I understand too much, and too late. I’m transported: back to a city I left, a version of myself I shed, conversations that felt permanent at the time. They’re texting from the past. I’m answering from somewhere else entirely—not just another place, but a different version of myself. Then, I realize I haven't spoken to anyone from "back home" in weeks.

It sneaks up in moments that don’t look like grief. A text from someone who still assumes I’m just a short drive away. A calendar reminder for something that no longer applies. A message asking, “Still loving it over there?”—as if “over there” were a temporary glitch. A passing smell reactivates an entire former version of myself. Or the realization that a tradition I once took part in—Easter lunch, graduation season, cherry blossoms—is unfolding somewhere else, without me. Cities change mayors, landscapes, policies. I was not there to vote, or grieve, or celebrate. The news cycle of my native country begins to feel like a story I’m supposed to care about—but only abstractly. Small reminders that time has moved on without consensus.

And maybe the oddest part: home doesn’t stand still. It grows without me.

Sometimes it’s sentimental. Sometimes it’s just exhausting.

There's a kind of grief embedded in this, though it’s not dramatic enough to name. I miss versions of myself that only existed in a different context—selves I shed not with ceremony, but through the erosion of habits.

This isn't homesickness, not exactly. It’s something stranger. A subtle, ongoing misalignment between where I am and when I am.

I sometimes wonder if part of the restlessness isn’t about place at all, but about chronology. I miss certain people not because I would call them now, but because I called them then. The versions of us that knew how to reach each other no longer pick up the phone.

Living abroad dislodges you from time

Not in the sci-fi sense, but in the soft, relentless way your present stops matching the rhythm of the people you once knew. And so there is grief—not only for the place you left, but for the version of yourself that belonged to it. I wake up and feel I’ve landed in a life someone else was supposed to live. Not unhappily—but strangely. Like I’ve arrived mid-sentence, inheriting a rhythm I didn’t write. As if my past self and present self are running parallel but asynchronous, like two browser tabs buffering different versions of the same memory. I look at my hands making coffee in a kitchen where everything is familiar yet recent, and I wonder: which version of me thought this was the next logical chapter?

Anyone who’s moved countries, changed lives midstream, or walked away from the familiar knows this feeling. Temporal dislocation is a psychological term for the disconnect between the time your body occupies and the time your psyche believes you're in. It’s been studied in soldiers, immigrants, the bereaved. When context shifts profoundly, we often fail to update the internal maps that tell us where—and when—we are. Your body moves faster than your identity can keep up. So much adaptation is asynchronous. You become a different person before you realize it, and by the time you try to explain yourself to the people who used to understand you, they no longer share the reference points.

Time becomes layered. This layered temporality distorts your sense of progress. Milestones become hard to measure. You can’t compare yourself to peers back home, because their context is no longer yours. You can’t compare yourself to locals either, because their reference points are entirely different. And so you float—between calendars, between expectations, between selves.

You forget which version of yourself last saw a friend. Was it the one who still believed in five-year plans?

As an expat, you carry versions of time that coexist but don’t cooperate. There’s the timeline you left—friends whose children have grown in fast-forward, family rituals reassembled without you, a political landscape you stopped understanding. Then there’s the emergent timeline here: the slow, stuttered rhythm of building something new, measured in firsts and near-misses. The gap between those timelines is rarely neutral. It carries a quiet ache.

There’s also the future to contend with—the one I thought I’d be living by now. When you change countries, careers, or relationships, you often abandon the timeline you were tracking toward. And yet the expectations linger. Like outdated software, they run in the background: Weren’t you supposed to have figured this out by now?

This, too, is a kind of displacement—not from a place, but from a narrative.

But perhaps the gift—if we can call it that—of temporal displacement is that it softens linear thinking. We stop asking, “Am I behind?” and start wondering, “What if I’m just… elsewhere?”

I expected to struggle with nostalgia, bureaucracy, cultural quirks. I didn’t expect to feel temporally misplaced. Like I was living in a different season—not just meteorologically, but emotionally. My friends back home were building lives to a shared tempo. I had veered off. I wasn’t ahead or behind. I was simply elsewhere.

Elsewhere can be fertile

Elsewhere holds the freedom to re-story your life without the urgency of catching up. It makes room for reinvention that doesn’t begin with ambition, but with orientation. Where am I, really? Not on a map. Not on a timeline. But here—hovering, halting, human.

Time moves—and not always with you. The person you were when you left—ambitious, maybe naive—still loops through the corridors of your old life. There are texts you leave unanswered—not because you’ve forgotten, but because replying would mean re-entering a version of yourself you no longer know how to embody. Meanwhile, the person you are now is navigating systems that weren’t made with you in mind, building friendships in odd increments.

Sociologists have touched on this in discussions of cultural lag—how the psychological or social self struggles to catch up with technological or geographic shifts. I feel it more intimately as identity lag: the person I’ve become here often feels unfamiliar to the people who once knew me best. And the version of me that once made sense in that old context? She’d barely recognize this life.

There’s an old version of me still lingering in the city I left. She probably thinks I’m returning soon. I don’t know how to tell her I’ve moved on—without fully arriving anywhere. You don’t just leave places. You leave timelines. You ghost your own expectations.

Many of us who live elsewhere move through time differently. Not ahead, not behind. Just… askew. Disorientation doesn’t come only from relocation, but from temporal slippage. You visit home and realize people have gotten used to your absence. Even your language sounds oddly formal in your mouth. And in your new home, you’re always a few steps behind.

Still, some days, I long for synchrony. For the kind of belonging that doesn't need to be explained or defended. For the feeling that my version of the year is not private. I don’t know if I will ever feel fully “caught up”—or if that’s even the point anymore. Sometimes the most honest self is the one that can admit: I’m here, but I’m still catching up.

I used to think of reinvention as a kind of bravery—starting over, becoming someone new. Lately, it feels closer to disappearance. You don’t choose to let go of the life you thought you were building; you simply stop being able to return to it. The language atrophies. The expectations fade. Even nostalgia gets blurry around the edges.

But maybe that's the real work of selfhood: not locking in an identity, but finding a way to live through continual misalignment.

I don’t have a clean ending to this. Maybe there isn’t one. Maybe part of the work is learning to live with temporal dissonance. To make peace with the fact that not every version of you will coexist comfortably. To accept that sometimes we build a life not in spite of this displacement, but because of it.

Related Letters

This letter continues the exploration of themes introduced in previous pieces, where the concept of temporal misalignment intersects with our shifting identities.

May’s Query

If you are in the mood for some self-discovery time and inspiring exchange, head to this month’s thought provoking questions. You can keep the answers for your introspective self or share them with others looking for solace in relating.

On Displacement, Synchronicity, and Selfhood

May’s Gathering

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Wednesday, May 21

9.30 - 11.00 CET

Online

How to join?

Paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Café and find it nourishing for your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This grants you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Café will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Monthly gathering

NOTE: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

Dear friends, I have a small favour to ask. There's a short survey—just under two minutes—that will help me understand what’s truly useful to you and guide future content and initiatives. Thank you!

There’s a small phrase that often lingers in the background of our decisions, fears, and hopes: “Will this make a difference?” Whether whispered in doubt or asked with quiet conviction, it reveals a deeper belief about how much agency we truly have in shaping our lives. This is where the concept of locus of control gently enters the room.

Originally introduced by Julian Rotter in the 1960s, locus of control is a psychological construct that describes how individuals explain the causes of what happens to them. Do outcomes depend on personal effort and choices (an internal locus), or are they shaped by external forces like fate, luck, or the decisions of others (an external locus)? It’s not a rigid trait but a tendency—one that influences how we make sense of setbacks, pursue goals, and respond to uncertainty.

Needless to say, I find the topic deeply relevant—especially because the promise of control, particularly internal control, is often marketed today as a personal virtue. The wellness industry, in particular, leans indiscriminately on this narrative, suggesting that we alone are responsible for our outcomes. This mindset, though seductive, risks erasing the nuanced interplay between individual effort and systemic conditions. And yet, our need to feel a sense of control over our environment isn’t a lifestyle choice. It’s a condition for survival.

In transitional moments—like stepping into a new phase of life, moving, motherhood, or beginning a new job—our beliefs about control often surface more clearly. Do we believe our effort will matter? Or do we quietly brace for disappointment? Starting a new academic path in midlife has brought those questions back to the forefront for me. The old scripts reappear: Will I manage the workload? Will it lead somewhere meaningful? Am I too late to change direction? And underneath them all, the more essential question: Where do I place trust?

The positive psychology perspective

Psychological research suggests that a strong internal locus of control is associated with greater motivation, resilience, and well-being. When we believe our actions make a difference, we’re more likely to try, to persist, to grow. But it’s not without complications. This orientation can also make us overly self-reliant, hesitant to ask for help, or quick to blame ourselves when things go wrong. On the other hand, leaning too far into an external locus may protect us from overwhelming responsibility but risks leaving us disempowered, passive, or stuck in a loop of doubt.

This dynamic isn’t just abstract—it plays out in daily life. For example, in the workplace, people with a strong internal locus tend to feel more engaged and purposeful but may struggle in rigid or predictable systems. Emotionally, they’re more likely to use active coping strategies, while those with an external orientation may feel more at the mercy of their circumstances, especially in times of stress or instability.

Internal, external or just human

But the truth is, no single perspective is inherently better. The self isn't a fortress; it’s a porous, responsive form. It responds, adapts, absorbs, and releases. Maturity, perhaps, lies in learning how to move between positions—recognizing when action is needed and when acceptance is wiser. As Marion Milner wrote in A Life of One’s Own, the freedom we long for is not always found in choosing whatever we like, but in becoming aware of what we are choosing, and why.

What struck me most while reading and reflecting on this concept is how fluid this locus can be. When I feel resourced, supported, and safe, I step forward with confidence. I speak up, try things, take risks. But when stress creeps in, when the world feels indifferent or too vast, I pull back. I stop believing my efforts can make a difference. And from that place, it's easy to spiral into inertia.

But simply noticing this shift is powerful. Because awareness itself is a form of agency.

This month at Eirene Cafe, we are making space for that awareness. The gatherings return, the journaling continues, and the questions will unfold softly. Because in times of transition, we don’t need more control—we need more presence.

The process of living—after all—is not a matter of control, but of conscious participation.

That, in itself, is no small difference.

Related Letters

I touched on the theme of willpower as a means of control last June, across three letters. It was an uneducated reflection—somewhat erratic—a first attempt to understand the blending of person and environment.

The Odyssey of Change

The Equation of Change

Rituals for Change

April’s Gathering

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages:

Wednesday, April 16

9.30 - 11.00 CET

Online

How to join?

Paid subscription. If you value the intention behind Eirene Café and find it nourishing for your well-being, consider supporting it with a paid subscription. This grants you access to the Clarity Pages, and you’ll receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Subscribe now

Payment per gathering. If a one-time payment suits you better right now, you can choose to pay per gathering. Your subscription to Eirene Café will remain free, and you’ll still receive the meeting link the day before the gathering.

Monthly gathering

NOTE: If paying isn’t possible right now and you’d benefit from the monthly gatherings, email me at eirene.cafe@gmail.com, and I’ll send the meeting link the day before the gathering —no questions asked.

When you think about Milan, you likely picture the Duomo—its marble towers reaching towards the sky, anchored at the very heart of the city. Until recently, this majestic structure wasn’t part of my daily routine, but as life shifted, my commute began bringing me to its steps every morning. Emerging from the subway, I’d slow down, sometimes even stop, savoring the moment and allowing myself to marvel at the Duomo’s carved marble walls—a reminder of times when architecture aimed to immortalize the essence of a place, the genius loci.

That word—savor—captures something elusive about our connection to the spaces around us. In a world of instant consumption, savoring is rare. It requires surrendering control and letting go of expectations. To savor means allowing ourselves to experience that childlike awe, a sensation of time expanding and intensifying.

Milan is not a city that makes savoring easy

The coffee shop around the corner, the sidewalks we traverse daily, and even familiar waiting spots like train platforms—all these become parts of what Marc Augé calls non-places. These spaces, where individuals remain anonymous, are encountered only fleetingly as we pass. Non-places represent an odd paradox: their purpose is to facilitate daily life, yet they dilute the potential for meaningful human interaction and savoring. They’re familiar yet strangely empty, discouraging any real engagement. These are spaces to pass through, not places to connect within. Sadly, in recent years, many venues—even cafes and restaurants—have fallen into the trap of non-place status.

Initially, my journey through Milan’s streets and subways was a small ritual of rediscovery. Each day, I noticed the texture of the buildings, the people, the interplay of lights and shadows. But after a few weeks, that ritual transformed, shifting toward an indifferent rush. I became just another commuter, shielding myself from the noise, the crush of strangers, and the relentless ads. My enthusiasm was replaced by a kind of opaque hostility; I wanted to see as little as possible. Without realizing it, I had begun shutting out the world I’d initially savored.

It wasn’t until a recent lab session on environmental psychology that I understood why. As we discussed the stressors that make urban life so taxing, the professor’s words struck me: “Environmental stress desensitizes us to beauty,” she said. “To protect itself from sensory overload, the brain filters out most inputs, leaving only what’s vital to survival. The result? We stop perceiving beauty. Tragically, this desensitization also shuts down our empathy.”

As I listened, I felt a pang of recognition. Back when life was confined to our quiet neighborhood, I couldn’t pass by a hand extended in need without offering something small—some token of hope or comfort. But now, city life—with its subways, ads, noise, and crowds pressing against me—had gradually dulled that instinct. My compassion shrank alongside my attention to the world around me.

I learned that this phenomenon has a name: the blasé attitude

Sociologist Georg Simmel described this over a century ago, writing extensively about how the urban environment overwhelms us with stimuli, leading to what he called a "protective organ." Simmel’s insights remain strikingly relevant today. In cities saturated with artificial light, noise, and relentless movement, the blasé attitude can numb us to beauty, empathy, and even the motivation to engage with our surroundings. As urban life constantly demands more of our attention, we find ourselves shrinking back, distancing ourselves emotionally from our environment and the people within it. In this withdrawal, our capacity for empathy and genuine connection quietly diminishes.

Simmel once wrote, “To the blasé person, all things appear matted with a grey hue; none is preferable to the other.” This greyness in our perception of the world, though a defense against overstimulation, cloaks us in a loneliness that permeates urban life. Freedom in the city, Simmel argued, is a paradox. While the sheer size of the metropolis allows each person to carve out their individuality, the price is an emotional isolation that few of us anticipate. We become indifferent, constantly bombarded with stimuli that drain our emotional reserves, leaving little energy for genuine encounters.

The irony of the city is that while it offers freedom from the constraints of small-town life, it also makes us more isolated. The city fosters a unique type of loneliness where physical closeness does not equate to emotional connection. The person next to you on the subway might as well be worlds away. This protective detachment, while enabling us to function in such densely populated environments, also makes empathy and genuine community-building rare.

As this urban detachment grows, we pay the price in our social and emotional lives. Apathy becomes the norm. Even when our surroundings offer opportunities for connection, we’re physiologically inclined to withdraw because engagement feels exhausting. In this state of emotional numbness, there’s no marketing tactic, social initiative, or call to action that can stir us from indifference. Last year, I witnessed this apathy up close, encountering a collective indifference that dulled enthusiasm and hope.

While we’re living in a time that cries out for participation, collaboration, and empathy, our urban physiology—the numbness induced by overstimulation—stifles our instincts for connection. The question is: in cities that prioritize anonymity and efficiency, can we still find ways to savor, to empathize, and to be fully alive?

While cities like Milan draw us with promises of culture and connection, the very fabric of urban design may need a rethinking. We need spaces that encourage us to savor life and allow us to feel. Without them, the blasé attitude will continue to numb us, leaving us more isolated in a world that seems to press in on us ever closer.

November Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages. Paid subscribers will receive the meeting link the day before.

How do you adjust to a new living situation? Probably by making time and space for it. As much as I’d like to maintain multiple letters per month, I can’t keep up right now. For the next few months, these letters will come to you monthly.

After the initial confusion, I’m getting better at navigating the different physical spaces I visit. The stress is easing, and moving around the city and through spacious buildings is becoming routine.

This month is for some beautiful words. Also, our virtual gatherings are back, and I’m excited to be hosting Clarity Pages twice this month.

There are many ways to start the day, but when you’re on holiday, those possibilities often become narrowed. You wake up, put on your bikini or mountain boots, eat something at the restaurant downstairs, and then spend the rest of your time sunbathing or hiking.

During one vacation a few years ago, while suffering from insomnia, I would get up very early in the morning and not know what to do with myself. I realized that going out while everyone was still asleep and doing something quiet and meditative would set a positive tone for the day. Since that holiday, I’ve made it a habit to wake up at 6 a.m., put on some comfy clothes, grab my pouch with the book I’m reading at the time, my journal, and my headphones, and quietly leave the room. I always manage to find a good spot to spend a couple of hours comfortably and undisturbed, and I spend my mornings at the same place. If I’m lucky, I’ll find a much-needed cup of espresso along the way. But most of the time, deserted cafés and barren doors greet me as I pass by.

During our last vacation, I brought Anne Morrow Lindbergh’s small hardcover Gift from the Sea. It didn’t disappoint—her poetic reflections on life flowed through the pages. Some passages resonated deeply with me, and I took notes inspired by Anne’s thoughts, which I’ll share here along with my own reflections for future reference.

Gift from the Sea is an account of Anne’s solitary stay on Florida's Captiva Island in the early 1950s. Lindbergh wrote this essay-style work by drawing inspiration from the shells she found on the beach.

‘Living in grace—shedding—multiplicity = distraction,’ says my note in response to the following passage:

Simplification of outward world is not enough. It is merely the outside. But I’m starting with the outside. I’m looking at the outside of a shell, the outside of my life - the shell. The complete answer is not to be found on the outside, in an outward mode of living. This is the only technique, a road to grace. The final answer, I know, is always the inside. But the outside can give a clue, can help one to find the inside answer. One is free like the hermit crab, to change one’s shell. Channeled whelk, I put you down again, but you have set my mind, on a journey, up an inwardly winding spiral staircase of thought.

’No single form of a relationship’, says another note later in the book.

One learns to accept the fact that no permanent return is possible to an old form of relationship; and, more deeply still, that there is no holding of a relationship to a single form. This is not tragedy but, par of the ever recurrent miracle of life and growth. All living relationships are in process of change, of expansion and must perpetually be building themselves new forms. But there is no single fixed form to express such a changing relationship.

‘New stage to fulfill the neglected side of one’s self’ sounds very optimistic and is a note I can’t omit following Anne’s reflection on middle age:

For is it not possible that middle age can be looked upon as a period of second flowering, second growth, even a kind of second adolescence? It is true that society in general does not help one accept this interpretation of the second half of life. And therefore this period of expanding is often tragically misunderstood. Many people never climb above the plateau of forty-to-fifty. The signs that presage growth, so similar, it seems to me, to those in early adolescence: discontent, restlessness, doubt, despair, longing, are interpreted falsely as signs of decay. In youth one does not as often misinterpret the signs; one accepts them, quite rightly, as growing pains. One takes them seriously, listen to them, follows where they lead. One is afraid. Naturally. Who is not afraid of pure space – that breathtaking empty space of an open door?

I warmly recommend this little book. Even though some reflections may seem a bit outdated (remember, Anne wrote these words in the early 1950s, when the role of women in society was different), there are still philosophical questions that remain difficult to grasp even today, despite the progress and changes in expectations that women's roles have undergone in the past decades.

October Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us for this month’s Clarity Pages. Paid subscribers will receive the meeting link the day before.

What do you do at a crossroads?

You slow down and look at the signs to orient yourself. But it's not exactly a crossroads where I find myself at the moment. It's more like an on-ramp to the highway, coming from a quiet provincial road—that exact point where you slow down to assess when to merge into faster traffic.

Life is a breathing entity, and at this stage, it’s starting to feel larger, expanding. In less than a week, I’ll be sitting at an old university desk once again — an almost middle-aged woman among adolescents and young adults, trying not to seem too awkward or out of place. If everything goes as planned, by the time I turn fifty, I’ll be able to add "psychologist" next to my other professional titles. My one hope? That the right conditions allow me to sustain my intrinsic motivation alive.

Years ago, while doing my MA, I learned a valuable lesson: long-term plans are often nonsense. I had grandiose visions of what would come afterward, but instead, life surprised me with a wonderful baby. Maybe I won’t become a psychologist due to unforeseen circumstances, but one thing is certain: the next eight months will bring a faster rhythm and stronger beats to my daily routine.

Eirene Cafe is breathing, too, and will follow this change in pace. How and to what extent, I still don’t know. What I do know is that this expansion will be felt here as well. Hopefully, as my understanding of the world deepens, my writing, approach, and ideas will become more varied and articulate.

But this month and the next few months, I wont’t bring specific theme

This month is a beginning of a few months long interlude between two passages. More than a pause, it’s a moment of preparation for both me and my family. My little boy has just gone back to school, and my partner is returning to his demanding job. I’m preparing our home to support a more hectic lifestyle, trying to anticipate and prevent potential challenges. I’m equipping myself to be more efficient in mundane tasks as I carve out time and space for the weighty newness ahead.

This interlude will bring soothing and inspiring words in the next few months and will introduce lively art to accompany an introspective pause. After all, September, in one way or another, always signals an inevitable change.

I’ve often found myself drawn to the lives of women geniuses—those who dared to step beyond the rigid lines of expectation, who lived in the spaces between action and stillness, moving through the world with an aura of quietude that belied the extraordinary impact of their work. These women saw the world not just as it was, but as it could be. What did their days look like? How did they nurture their minds, their spirits, their creativity? The more I’ve delved into their stories, the more I’ve come to appreciate a seemingly paradoxical truth: these women often found their genius not in relentless activity, but in moments of stillness, of idleness. It’s a revelation that feels both intimate and empowering, as though we’ve been let in on a sacred secret.

Simone de Beauvoir once wrote that true existential introspection could only occur in moments of quiet reflection

This idea has stayed with me—a whispered truth that cuts through the noise of modern life. De Beauvoir’s notion of authenticity wasn’t a rigid adherence to an ideal self but rather an ongoing process of becoming, one that required time to simply be—to sit with oneself, to let thoughts percolate, to allow the mind to wander aimlessly. In the bustling streets of Paris, where every corner seemed to demand attention, de Beauvoir carved out spaces of stillness in her day. I imagine her sitting by a window in Paris, the city’s hum muted by the glass, lost in thought.

In her diaries, Virginia Woolf wrote of moments of being. Woolf knew that these fleeting, quiet moments—where the world seems to stand still—were the birthplace of her most profound ideas. The flashes of profound clarity that she described in her writing often came when she was alone, walking, daydreaming, letting her thoughts wander without purpose. These instances, when life breaks through the monotony of daily existence, were not planned or forced; they arose naturally, like bubbles surfacing in still water. Woolf’s essays and novels are infused with these flashes of insight, where time seems to stop, and the characters are suddenly, achingly aware of the beauty and fragility of life.

Similarly, Hilma af Klint, a visionary artist whose work predated and arguably anticipated abstract expressionism, would sit quietly in silence before ever touching a brush to canvas, letting her mind drift and her spirit open to whatever visions might come. It was in these moments of stillness that her abstract works began to form—not in the act of painting, but in the silence that preceded it.

And then there’s Agnes Martin, the minimalist painter who would sit in her studio staring at a blank canvas before beginning to paint. Living in the New Mexico desert, Martin often spent days in silence, letting the vast emptiness of her surroundings imprint on her psyche. It was in the expansive, empty spaces of her mind—spaces she cultivated through silent reflection—that she discovered the precise forms that would come to define her art: minimalist, grid-like paintings with subtle, meditative lines that echo with quietude.

When I think of Frida Kahlo, I see another kind of idleness—her idleness was an act of defiance, a refusal to be reduced by her circumstances. Confined to her bed for long stretches due to illness, unable to move, she painted herself into the world and turned her enforced idleness into a crucible of creativity. For Kahlo, her pain and immobility became a canvas for her imagination, a space where she could conjure the vibrant, surreal images that would define her visceral art.

In a similar manner, George Sand, the French novelist, embraced periods of idleness and found that idleness allowed her to transcend the rigid gender roles of her time. She would retreat into the countryside, where she could walk and think, free from the constraints of societal expectations. These periods of solitude were essential for her writing, providing the mental space she needed to explore ideas and emotions that were often at odds with the norms of her society.

Georgia O’Keeffe often wandered the vast landscapes of New Mexico, letting the aimlessness of her walks fuel her artistic vision. In these moments of desert wandering, O’Keeffe wasn’t merely passing time; she was communing with the land, allowing its forms and colors to seep into her consciousness and later emerge on her canvases.

Many female wanderers throughout history, like Sand and O’Keeffe, have found wisdom in these non-linear physical journeys

This idea finds resonance in the practice of flânerie, a term coined in 19th-century Paris to describe the act of wandering the city with no particular destination. Modern female flâneurs like Rebecca Solnit have redefined this practice, showing how physical and mental wandering are intertwined. Solnit’s walks are not just physical journeys but mental wanderings, a way to connect with the landscape of her own thoughts. Even the notion of reverie, so often dismissed as daydreaming, is an essential part of our mental and emotional well-being. It’s a mental wandering which, when combined with flânerie, allows us to reconnect with the world in a way that is both intimate and expansive.

There is also something to be said for the correlation between idleness and those slow, languid days where nothing much happens and feelings like nostalgia and lethargy arise

There’s a particular beauty in nostalgia, a sense of wistfulness that emerges when we reflect on the past. It’s often dismissed as unproductive, but in reality, it is a profound way of connecting with our own histories. Nostalgia, as social psychologist Constantine Sedikides suggests, is not just an indulgence but a way to enhance our sense of meaning and continuity in life. It connects us to our past selves, sometimes offering resilience in the face of present challenges. Even lethargy, that slow and heavy feeling we sometimes dread, has its place. Bertrand Russell, the philosopher, argued for its value, seeing it as a necessary counterbalance to the constant drive for productivity.

No wonder, then, that idleness is a state that resonates deeply with ancient traditions

The Greeks had their scholê—leisure not as mere rest, but as time set aside for thought and philosophy. Unlike our modern understanding of leisure as mere entertainment, scholê was seen as a time for contemplation, for nurturing the mind and spirit.

The Japanese concept of Ma—the space between things—offers another perspective on idleness. It is in this space, this pause, that meaning is created. Without Ma, life would be a relentless stream of action, without rhythm, without reflection.

Similarly, the Taoist concept of Wu Wei, or effortless action, teaches us that non-action is not the absence of action, but a form of wisdom, an understanding that sometimes the most powerful thing we can do is nothing at all, a way of aligning with the natural flow of life. In idleness, we’re connecting with the beauty in stillness, with the mono no aware—the pathos of things—that heightens our awareness of the world around us.

So, what do we do with all of this?

Perhaps it’s not about embracing idleness as a trendy new habit, or as a self-help mantra, but about recognizing it as a necessary, even sacred, part of our lives. It’s not about doing nothing; it’s about doing nothing of urgency with the grace of unstructured time. There's something profoundly comforting in the idea that idleness can be a form of wisdom in a world that often devalues it.

In writing this, I find myself pausing, reflecting on the value of these moments, and I hope that you, too, find a sense of connection and inspiration here.

August Gatherings

This month, as many of us are (hopefully) embracing idleness and enjoying the wind in our hair, we will pause our Tuesday morning journaling sessions. Let’s reconnect in September.

There’s a quiet magic in the moments when we allow ourselves to do nothing. Not the deliberate, carefully scheduled "me-time" that still carries the weight of productivity, but true idleness—the kind that sneaks up on us, almost forbidden in a world that demands constant motion. I often find myself defending this idleness, not just to others, but to myself. We live in a world that glorifies productivity, where every moment is accounted for, filled with tasks, goals, and deadlines.

Maybe it’s because I find great solace in the science behind idleness

The science of idleness isn’t just about rest; it’s about something far deeper. When we allow ourselves to be idle, our brain’s default mode network (DMN) quietly hums to life. Neuroscientist Marcus Raichle’s research discovered this web of brain regions that becomes more active when we are at rest, not focused on any particular task. In those idle moments, our brains light up like a hidden city at night—spontaneously solving problems, sparking creativity, and processing emotions. It’s as though our minds, freed from the pressure to perform, take flight and wander into new territories, stitching together ideas in unexpected ways.

Jonathan Smallwood, a cognitive psychologist, has delved into the phenomenon of mind-wandering and found that during these seemingly unproductive moments, our brain switches into what he calls the “diffuse mode.” This is the birthplace of creativity, a state where our minds can float freely, making unexpected connections, seeing patterns we might miss in our more focused, linear thinking. It’s like giving our minds permission to play and explore without boundaries, and it is here where innovation and creative problem-solving truly flourish.

Nancy Andreasen, a neuroscientist who has spent decades researching creativity, complements this view. Her studies show that highly creative people often slip into this diffuse mode without even realizing it. This isn’t just anecdotal; Andreasen’s research demonstrates that artists, writers, and inventors often rely on these periods of rest and idleness to fuel their work. Imagine our minds as vast landscapes, with rivers of thought that need time to meander and find new paths. When we give ourselves the gift of idleness, we tap into a process known as incubation. That word alone sounds soft, nurturing, like a pause before a grand reveal. There’s a beauty in how our subconscious mind takes over when we relinquish control, working quietly, unnoticed, behind the scenes. I’ve noticed this in my own life, during the most ordinary of moments—while walking, folding laundry, or stirring a pot of soup. It’s as if my thoughts rearrange themselves, knitting together in new ways, until, without warning, the right idea surfaces, fully formed and unbidden, as if plucked from the ether.

When I think of idleness, I think of the spaces between the notes of a song—those silences that make the melody possible

It’s not just about rest; it’s about the richness that emerges from these pauses. Our brains, intricate and magnificent as they are, aren’t machines designed for perpetual focus. Neuroscientific research reveals that our cognitive capacities operate in cycles, known as ultradian rhythms. These rhythms dictate that after 90 to 120 minutes of concentration, our brains need a break—a natural ebb in the tide of mental energy. This isn’t laziness; it’s biology.

There’s something deeply nurturing about this. In a world that values productivity and efficiency, idleness becomes a form of quiet rebellion, a way of reclaiming our right to simply be, without the constant pressure to do. And it’s here, in these open, unstructured spaces, that our creativity truly thrives. It’s where we find the answers we didn’t know we were looking for, where we heal in ways that productivity could never offer.

Perhaps one of the most beautiful and lesser-known ideas connected to idleness is psychogeography—the way wandering through a place, without a set destination, can open up new ways of thinking and feeling. When we allow ourselves to drift through a city or nature, we’re engaging with our environment in a deeply intuitive way. The French writer Guy Debord coined this term to describe how our geographical surroundings can profoundly influence our emotions and behaviors. There’s something healing, almost magical, about this kind of wandering. It’s as though the world, in its quiet way, is showing us new perspectives, inviting us to see the familiar in unfamiliar ways.

And all of this—incubation, mind-wandering, cognitive rest, and psychogeography—reminds us that we are designed to thrive in the spaces in between. It’s in these moments of stillness, when the world hushes around us, that our minds expand. We’re not running away from life; we’re preparing to meet it more fully, with a sense of clarity and creativity that only rest can bring.

In a way, idleness isn’t about doing less—it’s about doing what’s necessary. It’s a reclaiming of our time, our minds, and our hearts. When we embrace it, we become fertile ground for new ideas, for resilience, and for a deeper understanding of the world and our place in it. So, the next time you find yourself sinking into stillness, remember: you are not idle. You are becoming.

August Gatherings

This month, as many of us are (hopefully) embracing idleness and enjoying the wind in our hair, we will pause our Tuesday morning journaling sessions. Let’s reconnect in September.

This letter is late, and I could say it was for a dozen responsible, adult reasons, but the truth is: I was seduced by idleness. That irresistible call to pause, to be still, exists in stark contrast to our world of perpetual motion.

It came like a soft whisper in the middle of the day, pulling me away from the screen. I lay down for what was meant to be a quick rest but turned into unanchored floating through the August’s afternoons, lost in thought and stillness. You know the kind I’m talking about: that soft space where time slips between the cracks of our daily duties and you find yourself staring out of a window, watching the light dance across the walls, thinking of nothing in particular, yet feeling something profound. Maybe it was this moment of stillness that led me to reflect on idleness itself. Or maybe it was the guilt, that uneasy sensation that lingered like an unwanted guest at the edge of a gathering, that whispers, "You should be doing something."

And yes, I feel the guilt. That old, familiar guilt, so hard to shake because it’s been ingrained in me for so long. The moment I slip into idleness, there’s that voice—the one that’s been planted in us by generations of women who had no choice but to work tirelessly—telling me I’m being lazy, selfish, wasting time. I’ve been conditioned to see myself as being whose worth is tied to productivity, care, and service. But let’s interrogate this: whose time am I wasting? And who taught me that idleness was something to be feared, rather than cherished?

Capitalism thrives on the commodification of our time

Silvia Federici, a feminist scholar, reminds us that the invisible labor women perform—domestic work, emotional caretaking, all the thankless tasks—has long been woven into the capitalist framework. We become gears in the machine, our time co-opted to serve others, often without pay or acknowledgment yet our worth tied to how much we can produce—whether that’s a clean house, a well-behaved child, or a flawless project at work. In this system, idleness isn’t just discouraged; it’s dangerous and feels like an act of betrayal. We’ve internalized the myth that every second must be accounted for, used to push some task forward, to care for someone, to create something. It’s painted as laziness, decadence, or irresponsibility, a betrayal of the virtues society has so carefully carved into us. Idleness becomes subversive because it is unaccounted for, uncommodified. This guilt is not ours; it’s the echo of centuries of conditioning, the residue of a society that’s built on the unpaid labor of women. And yet, we cling to this busyness, fearing that without it, we will dissolve into irrelevance. The guilt feels personal, but it’s profoundly political.

The history of this is layered. Men, for centuries, have been afforded the space to idle intellectually, philosophically, artistically—think of the café culture in 19th-century Paris, where men sat, smoked, and mused over ideas that would change the world. Meanwhile, women were expected to stay busy with their minds always tethered to the needs of others and domestic work, the kind that left no room for intellectual or creative wandering. We see this in the stories of so many women artists and writers, whose creativity was confined to the stolen moments between chores, between the needs of husbands and children. Virginia Woolf wrote of needing a room of one’s own—a physical space, but also a temporal one. Idleness carves out that room. It gives us the space to wander, to dream, to reconnect with parts of ourselves that we’ve buried under the demands of daily life. Even now, when we watch films or read books, how often do we see the trope of the creative male genius, lost in thought, while the women in his life spin around him, busy, dutiful?

Audre Lorde spoke to this when she emphasized the importance of self-care as an act of political resistance. She wrote, “Caring for myself is not self-indulgence, it is self-preservation, and that is an act of political warfare.” Idleness, then, is not just a personal act of rebellion against hustle culture; it is a radical act of reclaiming our time, energy, and autonomy. It is stepping outside the systems that have commodified our bodies and minds for centuries and saying: I refuse to be consumed.

Still, it's complicated, isn't it? That guilt that creeps in when we allow ourselves to linger in a moment of nothingness. The sense of inadequacy when we're not doing enough—whatever "enough" means. We may wander from one thought to the next, feeling the tug of our to-do lists on the edges of our consciousness. But here's a gentle truth: that guilt is not natural. It is learned. It is a product of centuries of conditioning, of gendered expectations that men could sit and think, create art, or contemplate philosophy, while we were expected to be busy, industrious, serving, nurturing. Men could afford to be idle in intellectual pursuits while women’s idleness was seen as laziness, as a failure of duty.

I believe there’s a quiet revolution happening

It doesn’t look like marches or chants or raised fists. It looks like stillness. Like a woman sitting alone in a park, her phone off, her gaze wandering towards the treetops. It looks like closing the laptop when there’s still work to be done. This revolution is idleness, and it’s a radical act of resistance—particularly for us women, who have been conditioned to be everything to everyone, but rarely to ourselves.

If we look to history, we find that idleness has often been the breeding ground for revolution, for creativity, for ideas that shape the world. In moments of pause, women have dreamed up new ways of thinking, of being.

But this resistance, this embracing of idleness, is not just about pushing back against capitalism or patriarchal structures. It is also about reconnecting with something deeper, something far older than the systems that bind us. When we allow ourselves to be idle, we reconnect with the natural rhythms of the world—we step into this slower, more cyclical flow. We reconnect with a sense of time that is not linear but circular and is measured in the soft fall of light at dusk, the quiet murmur of leaves, the slow ebb and flow of tides, the quiet bloom of flowers, the cyclical shapes of the moon.

The ecology of idleness teaches us that we, too, are part of this greater rhythm.

What if this was exactly what I needed, what we all need—a form of resistance against the relentless pace of life? Could idleness be more than indulgence?

So, today, I embrace idleness not as a shameful secret, but as a deliberate and necessary act of defiance.

August Gatherings

This month, as many of us are (hopefully) embracing idleness and enjoying the wind in our hair, we will pause our Tuesday morning journaling sessions. Let’s reconnect in September.

In the late eighties and early nineties, I was a little girl spending a few days at my grandparents' house every summer. Every morning, when I woke up, my grandfather was already gone. He would wake up early and, depending on the day, would go to the farmers market three kilometers from our house, walking up and down the narrow streets of the old town. He would do this three times a week, returning with heavy cotton bags full of fresh produce. But the most remarkable aspect, the one I remember with great pleasure, was the stories he would bring to discuss with my grandmother. On his way, he would encounter numerous acquaintances, friends, and relatives, and would stop to chat with everyone. Stories of deaths, births, family disagreements, and gossip would flow and become their main preoccupation for the next hour, as my grandmother made lunch and my grandfather rested by the kitchen table.

On the mornings when the farmers weren’t selling fruit and vegetables, my grandfather would still be gone when I woke up. With his small folding chair under his arm, he would go to the main square of the neighborhood and spend the entire morning sitting in the shade of the old oak tree, in a circle with other peers, just talking and listening. More stories would flow at lunch, and for me, it was like a portal opening into the multilayered, incomprehensible world of adults. Over the years, I would witness the development of entire family sagas with chapters being released sporadically, turning unexpectedly to happy or tragic events.

My grandmother’s place for social interactions was closer to home: she would sit on a small concrete bench just a few steps from the house, with other older ladies, in turn grandmothers to my summer friends who were visiting or living in the same neighborhood as my grandparents. She would occasionally abandon the conversation to make a quick check on what was slowly simmering on the stove or growling in the washing machine.

There were no appointments or schedules for these gatherings. Everyone would show up whenever they could and stay as long as they could. The only purpose of these encounters was to talk, listen, and often just be in each other’s company, in silence, observing rare passersby, domestic activity on nearby balconies or in yards, and the movements of insects.

I had my place to go, too. It was the street that bisected the neighborhood. More than 20 kids would gather every day to play, talk, and sometimes ideate dangerous activities. I grew up managing multifaceted interactions and emotions daily, without the constant supervision and interference of an adult.

What would our lives have been without the farmers market, the main square, the concrete bench, and the recently asphalted street? What would our everyday life have been without these third places offering their unique opportunities to be and relate to others spontaneously, without time and space constraints, regularly and predictably?

Unfortunately, we know the answer: impoverished and dangerously isolating, as it is today for many elderly and children.

The third place

The way we humans come to be ourselves is always relational, and it’s a process that requires social and interpersonal skills that many of us take for granted. We grow and develop our sense of self in interplay with others; through acting, reacting, talking, telling, and listening.

These were the third places that today, at least in our developed countries, are on the verge of extinction.

It was the sociologist Ray Oldenburg who coined the term third place in his 1989 book The Great Good Place. The third place is not home and not work, but instead one of the physical settings that have throughout history encouraged a sense of warmth, conviviality, and that special kind of human sustenance we call community.

According to an article published by Oldenburg himself, this is what makes a place a third place:

It’s neutral ground: You don’t need an invitation, and anyone can enter.

It’s unstructured: You can come and go as you please.

It’s not expensive.

It’s a place to talk: Conversation is the main activity, though playing games like chess and mahjong is also common.

It’s near your home or workplace: Ideally, you can walk to your third place.

It has regulars: But strangers aren’t out of place.

Chatter, joking, and teasing are an integral part of a third place.

I’m aware of attempts to pass gyms, co-working spaces, or indie coffee shops as these old hubs for social connectedness. While I’m happy for the attempt, I’m very skeptical they will ever succeed in connecting people in a meaningful way since all these new concepts’ main goal is to make a profit, apparently designed to disincentivize lingering. They are places mainly for the privileged. What I see in these attempts is the creation of an illusion of a third place, which more often than not results in a false sense of connection, as you are surrounded by people. But these realities can potentially trigger an even deeper sense of isolation as no real interactions are going to happen. People attending are coming with a clear purpose: to exercise or to work. They enter these places intending to isolate themselves in a certain activity, not to connect. They bring devices as a way to say “do not disturb,” discouraging any potential interaction with others.

The immeasurable value of true third places is in the nurture and prevention they’re built upon. It’s an environment where individual friendships could happen organically and at the same time offer the feeling that you are welcomed, seen, and appreciated as part of a social group.

Because when we talk about loneliness, we talk about emotional and social loneliness.

Sociologist Robert Weiss introduced the idea that loneliness can take on two forms. The first form, called emotional loneliness, occurs when we lack deeply close relationships and emotional connections with others. The second form, known as social loneliness, happens when we feel isolated from others and don't experience enough meaningful social interaction.

Without emotional security with others, we feel emotionally lonely

According to Social Penetration Theory, formulated by Altman & Taylor in the seventies, for relationships to develop, there must be an exchange of information. Vital to social penetration is breadth, the number of topics discussed, and depth, the degree of intimacy that guides these interactions.

We need to be aware that certain essential conditions must be met for the process of bonding — which moves a relationship from superficial to more intimate — to happen.

Self-disclosure is one of them. How much we open up, show our vulnerability, and allow others to do so with us can predict the emotional security we feel within a certain relationship. More recent studies have found that when strangers are getting to know one another, the more they share about themselves, the more they end up liking each other.

Regularity with which we meet. Sociologists have long recognized that friendships thrive when we have continuous interaction. Research conducted in the 1960s showed that we’re primed to like people more if we know that we’ll see them again.

Mere exposure effect is a lesser-known but essential factor. In line with regularity, repeated interaction opportunities allow us to capitalize on our tendency to like things more the more familiar they seem, and this applies to people too.

Being around random people indiscriminately will not prevent us from feeling emotionally lonely or socially isolated. In big cities like Milan, we have the impression that they abound with opportunities for connection, but the reality is grim: most of them physically mimic some characteristics of third places at high financial cost while failing to provide the opportunity for repeated encounters and shared experiences that draw us closer.

With all this in mind, the chances of finding the right setting that provides the right conditions for emotional security between two individuals to form and thrive seem very low. I often wonder if, in times of no real third places, turning to shallow alternatives and relying on luck will ever make a positive U-turn.

Feeling like we don't belong leads to social isolation

Thich Nhat Hanh introduced the concept of interbeing to highlight how deeply interconnected our existence is with others and the natural world. He saw human life as fundamentally relational—our survival and sense of meaning depend on the connections we build with people and nature.

For him, interbeing wasn't just a philosophical idea—it was a call to action.

He encouraged what he called “socially engaged” mindfulness, which is about more than just individual meditation. It’s about coming together to practice mindfulness, building strong, ethical communities, and tackling social and environmental challenges. Through this collective approach to mindfulness, Thich Nhat Hanh suggested we can break free from the mental patterns that make us feel isolated and disconnected.

This concept of interbeing is not unique to Buddhist philosophy. In the Nguni Bantu traditions of Southern Africa, the word ubuntu conveys a similar idea. Liberian peace activist and Nobel laureate Leymah Gbowee translates it as: “I am what I am because of who we all are.” Archbishop Desmond Tutu, a theologian and anti-apartheid leader, explained the Zulu phrase umuntu ngumuntu ngabantu as: “A person is a person through other people.” Both interbeing and ubuntu encapsulate the essence of belonging.

Our need to belong is as ancient as human society itself. In the earliest days, people formed tight-knit kin groups or villages that were essential for survival. These communities worked together to hunt or gather food, took turns caring for one another’s children, and provided mutual protection. Being part of such a group was not just beneficial—it was often a matter of life and death.

Feeling a lack of belonging goes beyond just emotional loneliness. We might have strong, fulfilling relationships with friends, family, or colleagues, yet still feel like we don’t quite fit in with our workplace, family, city, or other social contexts.

Belonging often relies on shared values, customs, or activities that connect us to a group and give our lives meaning and purpose. When we feel that others in our social circles don’t understand or appreciate our values and interests, it can lead to feelings of distress and disconnection. The discomfort of not fitting in where we’d hope to be seen and valued can deeply impact our well-being and leave us feeling isolated and alienated even in the midst of a bustling social environment. In these moments, we’re reminded that a true sense of belonging is not just about having relationships but about finding our place within a larger community that resonates with who we are.

Closing the circle

It’s clear that social identity and emotional loneliness are closely linked through our deep-seated need for belonging. We naturally gravitate toward groups that resonate with our own values and characteristics, seeking out communities where we feel accepted and understood. These connections don’t just provide comfort—they shape our sense of self. Being part of a group influences our thoughts, feelings, and actions in profound ways.

This brings us back to an important truth: thriving emotionally requires more than just personal introspection. We need rich, nuanced social identities that align with and enhance our individual sense of self. Our well-being is closely tied to the communities we belong to and the roles we play within them. Without these meaningful connections, our emotional lives can feel incomplete and lonely.

In essence, our social identities and personal sense of self are inextricably linked, and nurturing both is fundamental not just for combating loneliness but for fostering a deeper, more meaningful understanding of ourselves and our place in the world.

I’m an only child. For most of my childhood, I was regarded as an unfortunate kid. When my parents' friends visited us, there was always a veil of pity in their eyes. They equated playing alone with being lonely. It’s true that I spent most of the time by myself, engaged in solitary activities. My earliest memories are of playing alone on the living room floor, feeling a deep sense of calm and contentment. But my life was pleasantly inhabited by loving presences: numerous friends, classmates, neighbors, cousins, and other family members. I never felt the need to combat feelings of emptiness or depend on others to dissipate long hours of boredom. Despite the belief that an only child is most likely to experience isolation and loneliness, I never experienced them until my early thirties.

But in my early thirties, my life changed drastically. A distance—both physical and emotional—developed between me and the social connections I had built in different periods of my life. Initially, my aloneness continued to be nurturing and fulfilling as I was building my new life. It still felt like an exciting wonder and exploration. However, within months, an oppressive sensation began to emerge as I started to realize that my beloved solitude couldn’t be interrupted. Being my only company was not a choice anymore. It collapsed over me and buried me, making me feel anxious in the few occasions for social interactions. I gradually withdrew and became isolated.

For the first time in my life, I was experiencing a terrible sense of loneliness.

This condition created a somewhat ambivalent relationship with myself. I longed to connect and return to my old self, yet at the same time, I felt afraid and repulsed by the socially awkward new me, overtaking the once lively, funny, and confident person I used to be.

In one of his interviews, U.S. Surgeon General Dr. Vivek Murthy, author of Together: The Healing Power of Human Connection in a Sometimes Lonely World, and what Time named “the doctor of human connection,” elegantly summed up what I would otherwise messily try to explain in pages of words: "Connection to self, it turns out, is the foundation that we need to connect to other people. When we're connected to ourselves, we understand that we have self-worth. And it turns out that there are really two components to connection to self, two components, if you will, to self-acceptance. And those are self-knowledge and self-compassion."

I realized that I was actually in a deep state of grief, which worsened after my son was born. This was due to the loss of many of my other social identities and my biggest source of mental and emotional balance: my solitude. I mourned the times when I could effortlessly lose myself in my own thoughts, drift away in a solitary activity like reading and writing, or simply abandon myself to hours of idleness watching the trees or the colonies of ants in the garden.

One of the most powerful antidotes to loneliness is solitude

I know, it sounds counterintuitive. Until recently, I wasn’t even aware of their profound differences: both suggest aloneness, and for someone suffering from loneliness, it’s natural to focus mainly on the depleting side of being alone.

But again, it’s Dr. Murthy who encourages a change in perspective in simple words: “What's powerful about solitude is it gives us both the time to quieten the noise around us, but it also gives us the opportunity to reflect and to simply be. You know, there is a tension in our modern world between being and doing. We're built, as a culture, around action. […] But one of the things that I have come to understand more deeply in the process of talking to people and researching this topic of loneliness is that being precedes action. And we all know this in our own lives. We know that when we spend time getting into the right frame of mind, then often we can be much more effective in the action that we take. And so solitude is extraordinarily powerful because it allows us to focus again on being.”

Scientific research shows that spending more hours alone is linked with increased feelings of reduced stress, suggesting solitude's calming effects. A day with more time in solitude also relates to feeling free to choose and be oneself.

It turns out solitude is a form of self-care

But it’s important to note that solitude should be motivated by personal choice rather than enforced by external factors to be beneficial. We are talking about gestures of active aloneness, a state of peaceful solitude where we find comfort, not desolation—a piece of space and time for self-reflection and personal evolution.

According to Kim Samuel, the founder and chief belonging officer of the Samuel Centre for Social Connectedness and author of On Belonging: Finding Connection in an Age of Isolation, we are facing a paradox where 'solitude—a chosen state of being alone for reflection and restoration—should theoretically be more accessible in a time of more aloneness. But the opposite is true. Amidst a crisis of loneliness and isolation, we’re losing the time and space for solitary quiet reflection.'

While advocating for 'pro-solitude policies' that affirm our time for rest and renewal and for protection of our 'right to disconnect,' she makes a clarifying point that there is no one-size-fits-all optimal way to experience solitude. Samuel encourages finding our own style of solitude and that’s where the real magic of solitude lies: in the freedom to explore and to find alternatives to existing solutions that suit us better. These are the most common recommendations but don’t be afraid to unleash your awkwardness potential and enjoy the unique experience.

Mindfulness. Sure, but not necessarily as a breathing practice. Immersing oneself in deep reading is also a form of mindfulness as it puts our minds in a state of sustainable attention for prolonged periods and activates our imagination. Uninterrupted attention and imagination—what an amazing combo to spend time with.

Nature. Not only observing but tending to it, too. Caring for other forms of life can be a way to dethrone the ego, overly fixated and preoccupied with unmet needs. I dream about having a garden velvety grass, peonies, ivy and tall trees, and I’m still puzzled by this relatively recent need and desire.

Artistic hobbies. Activities like painting, writing, dancing, acting, singing, encourage self-expression. Self-expression through art can be a great catalyst for releasing accumulated tension resulting from prolonged periods of discomfort and stress (yeah, loneliness is full packed with cortisol).

Personal goals. Unpretentious, please. Learning a new skill or working on a personal project, just for the sense of purpose and the pleasure of creating.

Somewhere in 2021, my restorative process began

At first, it was difficult to disentangle the enmeshment of loneliness and solitude. It felt like an amorphous mass of discomfort that was hard to separate. Whatever I proposed to myself to engage with was categorically refused. I was in the middle of a two-year battle with Long Covid, and this terrible beast, combined with chronic loneliness, dragged me into some very dark major depressive episodes, spiced with different types of anxiety.

It all started with listening to podcasts while pacing myself through basic house chores. True crime is a very captivating genre, and in a few months, I was able to watch an entire episode of some gruesome documentary, too. Cults, serial killers, unsolved mysteries... my curiosity and motivation were coming back to life. I was able to entertain and distract myself again, not with the genres I used to, but it didn’t matter. What mattered was that I felt hopeful as I was able to memorize pieces of information again.

Then I started journaling. For a year—the most difficult one—I wrote almost daily. At the same time, I managed to read half a page of a book. I bought a small light with a clip to secure on a book’s cover, in the warmest possible tones as I suffered from debilitating insomnia (it’s amber, almost red, very softly irradiating light and it became one of the objects I would find difficult to live without) since I couldn’t manage exposure to harsh natural and artificial light for more than half an hour.

After a while, I started researching different topics that I felt compelled to, silencing the indignation of the intellectual snob in me. The pleasure of learning new things slowly restored to almost normal levels.

Today, I’m able to write five to six essays per month, in a language that still doesn’t feel mine, and that usually takes around 50 hours of reading, researching and writing. It enriches and complements me, and keeps my mental health in good condition. I enjoy these hours of solitude, as a way to consistently connect with an even newer version of myself and a world on the edge of implosion.

And while loneliness occasionally still hits me with its venom, I can say that I reclaimed my solitude. One of my priorities is to keep these two separated and avoid future toxic enmeshments.

July Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us next Tuesday at 9:30 CET. Paid subscribers will receive the meeting link the day before.

“I’m at peace with my loneliness. It doesn’t make me suffer anymore, and I don’t long to have friends,” an older lady in her seventies told me recently.

For a second, her curved lips hinted at a trace of deep-seated resignation. Her voice was deep and almost a whisper, and as much as I wanted to find the wise calmness in it, nothing but apathy surfaced.

It was not a revelation to me—her lifestyle was telling; instead, I was surprised by her awareness and by the vocal admission of her lifelong loneliness. She belongs to a generation that sees vulnerability as a weakness, managing to cope with fear, sadness, and rage through a well-mastered ability of emotional repression.

Why was she so lonely?

On one occasion, she briefly opened up about why she failed to make friends. While she appears to be a confident person with a healthy dose of self-esteem, beneath the facade lies a woman trying to hide how unworthy she feels. Unworthy to feel loved, to be appreciated, to have other people’s exclusive attention. She feels like she’s never been enough.

Loneliness has been defined as the subjective, painful emotional state that occurs when there is a perceived discrepancy between a person’s desired and achieved patterns of social interaction. — Hawkley & Cacioppo

I knew what she meant. I feel that way too.

She is a mother, grandmother, wife, sister, and aunt; being her family’s caregiver and caretaker has always been her primary identity. In the first half of her life, she changed cities a few times. She lived in some of them long enough to build long-lasting friendships, but she didn’t manage to do so. She has no friends from the periods before moving out and after returning to her hometown. She never had a job and never got the opportunity to shape a more subtle aspect of her identity—that of a colleague—which lies between casual acquaintance and friend.

You would think that given her main occupation as a housewife, she would have developed strong bonds with at least a couple of neighbors, experiencing the reassurance of being in sync with the people living next door. That’s not the case, as the area where she currently lives is sparsely populated. She doesn’t have hobbies, practice sports, nor belong to religious communities; her daily activities are limited to cooking, cleaning, and watching TV.

Despite managing to maintain a reputation as a socially integrated person, apparently happy with the status of her connections and relationships, her life feels empty, deprived of important aspects that would have otherwise made for a multilayered identity.

For many of us, loneliness is a homecoming

Trying to pinpoint the cause behind it sets oneself up for failure, as humans are a vastness of complexities. However, there are interesting theories about why this lady fell into an unhealthy pattern of loneliness, isolation, and later depression, and why she never managed to break free from it.

According to sociologist Robert S. Weiss, who developed an influential psychological theory of loneliness, the explanation for this dangerous human condition lies in the attachment theory. Weiss identified six social needs that, if unmet, contribute to feelings of loneliness: attachment, social integration, nurturance, reassurance of worth, a sense of reliable alliance, and guidance in stressful situations.

Then there is the cognitive approach to loneliness. It posits that loneliness is characterized by distinct differences in perceptions and attributions. Lonely individuals tend to have a pessimistic general outlook; they are more negative than those who are not lonely about the people, events, and circumstances in their lives, and they tend to blame themselves for not being able to achieve fulfilling social relationships.

Another theoretical perspective, the behavioral approach, holds that loneliness is characterized by personality traits that are associated with, and possibly contribute to, harmful patterns of interpersonal interaction. For instance, loneliness is correlated with social anxiety, inhibition, sadness, hostility, distrust, and low self-esteem—characteristics that undermine one’s ability to interact in positive and rewarding ways.

When combined they can give us a more complete picture of what it means to be human.

It’s not all in our childhood, head, or behavior

I dare to say, there is something more. Reflecting on the life journey of this lonely lady and the meaningful relationships I’ve known, I’ve come to a more nuanced explanation—something I’ve felt in myself for the last 10 years but was unable to put into words until now.

I also dare to ask: can we, to a certain degree, hold our societal structures accountable for the growing number of people living with chronic loneliness?

It’s crucial to explore and acknowledge how complex aspects of our social context—such as feelings of belonging, sense of meaning, and social support—may contribute to feelings of isolation and solitude. To understand why, it is important to remember that who we are is defined not only by our unique characteristics, but also by the groups we identify with, such as our family, ethnic, occupational, social, political, or recreational groups. They are all building blocks of our identities, not only because of their practical or material outcomes, but because they give us the opportunity to experiment with our personal identities.

Not identifying with or belonging to valued groups means not having access to their social and psychological resources. These resources may include self-esteem, social support, a sense of shared purpose, and the ability to exert control over valued outcomes.

What happens when we are part of valued groups is magical. It enables us to develop and express more positive traits and qualities of ourselves and build and cultivate our social identities.

Social Identity Theory, proposed by Henri Tajfel and John Turner in the 1970s, posits that individuals derive a portion of their self-concept from their membership in social groups. The theory tries to explain the cognitive processes and social conditions underlying intergroup behaviors, especially those related to prejudice, bias, and discrimination.

Social identity is a person’s sense of who they are based on their group membership(s). — Tajfel & Turner

Needless to say, our social identities are a powerful prevention against loneliness and the mental health disorders that may consequently arise.

We focus so much on perfecting our personal identity that we perceive ourselves as stones lying on a beach, solid and fixed, when in reality, we are more like spider webs—ever-changing, overlapping, and easily affected by our interconnectedness.

Maybe it’s time we change perspective and move from 'I' to 'we' when we talk about loneliness

Instead of seeing ourselves limited to one identity, we should view ourselves as a multitude of identities that activate as the environment changes. Perhaps it’s time to ditch the oversimplification of 'I’m lonely' and say instead 'We are detached from vital experiences,’ where ‘we’ stands for the variety of social identities we have. When we feel lonely, it’s rarely only because of a lack of friendships. If you look further, you’ll see there are other parts of your being that are cut off from vitality and unable to express themselves.

At this point, I wonder if having other social identities or group memberships to fall back on could have protected this lady from becoming isolated and consequently depressed, both as a new mom in a new city and as an older woman lacking self-actualization. Research has shown that people who are reminded of their different social identities cope better with failure, particularly by reducing their inclination to attribute that failure to themselves. Additionally, evidence suggests that social identities and group memberships can provide purpose, a sense of belonging to the social world, and promote resilience against psychological strain.

We need to build awareness that sometimes our environment, with its social units, will fail to activate aspects that make us feel alive, connected, purposeful, and accomplished. It’s a great burden to deal with the vacuum we might feel in those situations.

Recently, I set myself up to understand better the ‘lateral’ factors that can trigger loneliness and how to spot them. Research has become my favorite pastime, and there are some interesting findings I’ll be sharing in the next couple of weeks.

July Gatherings

If you’re in the mood for good company and a journaling practice from the comfort of your armchair, join us next Tuesday at 9:30 CET. Paid subscribers will receive the meeting link the day before.

Morning hours are the most edifying and joyful time in this stage of my life. As soon as I gain a glimpse of consciousness, I feel a subtle excitement, anticipating the pleasure a cup of warm espresso will send through my spine.

The light is the first thing I notice while lying in bed. I can guess from its shadows if I’m going to have a good day. I feel a jolt of relief at the sight of a reassuring mellow grey hues on the walls; my mind is usually sharper and my chest loosens on cloudy and rainy days. A yellow, piercing through the curtains' glimmers, is instead a signal for an energy drainer, and I have a pang of frustration; it requires a bigger effort for me to regulate with higher temperatures and blinding light, and I end up with an overstimulated and exhausted body and mind.

I get up, and the next enjoyable thing is the silence. I abundantly, unhurriedly sprinkle my face and neck with cold water, no matter the season. It immediately boosts my lucidity. Still in pajamas, I start the process of making my cup of espresso. It takes less than a minute for the espresso machine to warm up, just the perfect amount of time to line up on the countertop a small cup, jar with sugar, and a capsule full of aromatic powder. Deciding the right amount of sugar is tricky, so most of the time I’m disgusted by the flavor. But I indulge in savoring the comforting feeling that lingers in the few minutes that precede and follow the disruptive sensation on my tongue’s papillae.

During the winter months, when the darkness penetrates deep into the morning hours, I light a candle: its occasional flickering makes the ether merrier; it’s a gentle introduction to the day ahead. With the cup in one hand, I stand by the window: it’s my first encounter with the sky for the day. I try to decipher what it has to say, but not in terms of meteorological events. It’s more like a soul reading: what I project onto the horizon is based on what is already circulating through my body—motivation, inspiration, anxiety, impatience, hope, disappointment.

This is my sacred ritual that I tend to replicate every morning, wherever I am. I don’t remember how it started, nor when I became a morning person waking up at dawn. But it has definitely tamed my morning anxiety. I understand now that the secret is in those nano pleasures: from guessing the light, to the temperature shock on my skin, and listening to the sky—all while clearing the brain fog.

A ritual is defined by psychologists as 'a predefined sequence of symbolic actions often characterized by formality and repetition that lacks direct instrumental purpose.' Research identifies three elements of a ritual. First, it consists of behaviors that occur in fixed succession—one after another—and are typified by formality and repetition. Secondly, the behaviors have symbolic meaning, and lastly, these ritualized behaviors generally have no obvious useful purpose.

My childhood and adolescence chronicle examples of Skinner’s behaviorism

I grew up in the eighties, in Yugoslavia. Behaviorism was spreading and was seamlessly integrated into society. It was widely accepted by generations of teachers and parents, and its application came very naturally to the adult population already burdened with intergenerational trauma. Behavioral change was a matter of extortion through positive and negative reinforcements. We were subjected to psychological and emotional conditioning at home, at school, and consequently among peers. Today, we know how damaging rewards of any kind are when used for manipulation and behavior suppression, or how cruel it is to coerce certain behaviors through deprivation, restriction, isolation, shaming, silent treatment, threats, and physical punishment to any self-aware living creature.

While abuse is faster in obtaining tangible behavioral changes, once the abuser is removed from the scene, previously enforced change will most likely vanish. In the worst-case scenario, some of us who were subjected to it have continued to live with learned helplessness, unprepared for healthy growth and development, and thus for deeply felt and wanted modification of personality traits or more fluid adaptation to ever-changing circumstances.

Every season, I notice minor transformations in my appearance

The aging process is underway, and while it’s irreversible, I want to age gracefully, with vitality, lightness, and flexibility. I've made many attempts to incorporate yoga and meditation into my routine. I followed what I was taught: to ruthlessly enforce the practice through conditioning. I regularly failed because one can only endure so much guilt and negative self-talk on a daily basis.

When change is a matter of choice, we have the ability to act. We possess a limited stream of conscious agency and self-control each day. Enforcing an activity that initially doesn’t make sense to our brain consumes a lot of energy, and we soon realize how unsustainable it is to expect leftover energy to get us through the day.

Genuine change is intrinsic and devoid of expectations. It’s a journey, not a destination. We hugely underestimate the power of pleasure when trying to voluntarily change aspects of our lives. But I don’t mean pleasure as a reward; if that’s the case, it’s essentially emotional manipulation and will rarely be helpful or healthy for our already fragile mental health. Rewards are often used for numbing our feelings or distracting from the real problem. What I mean instead is pleasure as an intertwined fiber of the doing, with the gradual discovery of glimmers of enjoyment. I regard pleasure as the reassuring feeling of knowing what’s coming next and that it can be easily replicated.

Studies show that the anxiety-reducing effect of rituals can apply to almost any high-pressure endeavor

Attempting a positive and lasting alteration of well established behavioural pattern means being mindful of the limited amount of self-control at our disposition. Incidentally, the type of ritual doesn't appear to have a bearing on the reduction of anxiety: even simple rituals, requesting very little effort can be extremely effective.

A ritual is a continuous process that allows a gradual awareness of various perspectives. One becomes more attuned to the environment and better able to find an appropriate response to situations. “From a young age, we cease to really respond to the real world around us,” says Michael Puett, a professor of Chinese history at Harvard University and author of The Path. We fall into patterns and ruts of responses shaped by our upbringing and become only partially perceptive.

Egon Brunswik is best known for his work on perception. As a perception researcher, Brunswik was very familiar with the Gestalt principles. He took these ideas further by emphasizing their functional nature. For example, why would the cognitive system follow the principle of continuity? According to Brunswik, the perceptual system follows such a law because it is useful and allows the system to make good predictions in its environment.

A repeated ritual, in time, will become a reassuring routine.

How do I make beneficial adjustments easy to maintain over time?

I want to be able to start doing yoga in the mornings without much effort. Negative self-talk, guilt, pressure, expectations, rewards—everything I was taught about behavior change failed to deliver the desired results.

There is an interesting theory that the process of change actually starts with an ending. Until we acknowledge that something has ended, we can't move forward toward a new beginning. Bridges’ Transition Model for Change suggests that change has a transitional nature. According to William and Susan Bridges, change consists of three stages: ending, neutral zone, and new beginnings. Individuals first grieve what they are letting go of before adopting new ways of being.

Apparently, I need to say goodbye to the times when, after the morning dialogue between me and the sky, I immediately moved to screens. This should be an end. I can even grieve the loss of my early morning dopamine boost granted by colorful notifications and bad news. I need time, even small amounts of it, just to sit without doing anything. I first need to detox, and like any detox, it can wreak havoc on my energy levels. A new ritual needs space and time, so making some is a necessary step.

As soon as I’m in the next stage, that neutral zone, my intention is to start sitting on my yoga mat. To diminish the effort and the natural resistance to anything new, every evening I’ll position my yoga mat in the kitchen, close to the espresso machine. I know this is going to be an initiation, a subtle anticipation gradually turning into a tender and reassuring gesture toward my struggling self who wants to take better care. I will allow as long as it takes, listening to the signals from my oppositional brain and proceeding slowly to avoid a coup. I will make it feel safe and running smoothly on standby while lying on the mat. I remember how good the pressure of my stiff back against the floor feels: the small, interwoven pleasure, hidden in the process.

A repeated ritual becomes a routine

I’m ready to end my current waking pattern and transition to a sitting-on-the-yoga-mat morning routine. Who knows, maybe one day, I will even do yoga on that yoga mat.

The July letters will start with a slight delay, and the gatherings will be held in the second half of the month.

We don’t have a garden in our home. We live so high up that the theory a neighbor told me about why most of my plants die seems almost plausible. He said it was because of the altitude. It looks like these creatures don’t feel rooted enough.

So when my third Ficus Benjamina in a row started losing its leaves, I felt sorry that it either didn’t feel rooted enough where it was placed or that it wouldn't survive. A few weeks ago, I was moving soil in the pots on one of our balconies. I try to create the illusion of an impromptu garden with wild seasonal flowers and unpretentious perennials. A narrow line of greenery, a fence if you will, tall enough to create a feeling of being separated from the ugliness of the Anthropocene, ravaging up in the air and down on the streets.

The ficus, by now more naked than adorned, was witnessing from behind the window the care I was giving to the others of its kind. The guilt crept in because, to be honest, I didn’t take proper care of it. I never really understood its needs. I rarely gave it the nurturing ingredients, and the watering was a mystery I still have to crack. Maybe, after all, it wasn’t the altitude.

I split the pot and cut most of what looked irreparably damaged and dead. I packed the soft, airy soil with white, pearl-like fertilizer and positioned the pot on the balcony, protected from direct sun rays and impetuous storms. Checking to see if something is moving on those emaciated branches has become a morning routine. At the moment, everything is silent and lifeless. But this morning, I noticed two tiny spots of newborn green, extremely delicate and tender. Who knows if I will be linking to this letter five years from now to show a lush, tall plant that is a joy for the eyes to behold?

To understand change, we need to understand behavior and unlearn some of what we know about it.

According to social psychologist Kurt Lewin, behavior is a complex realm of multilayered, dynamic interplay between an individual and their environment. He illustrated his theory with a simple equation:

B=f(P,E)

Where:

• B = Behavior

• f = function of

• P = Person

• E = Total Environmental Situation

Behavior is a function of the Person in their Environment.

Environment?

Even today, many experts believe that a person’s habits and actions are a result of their inherent nature, not the environment they are in. Leftovers of behaviorism are still deeply ingrained in collective thought after decades of conditioning. We were taught to think about change almost exclusively as an outcome of one’s behavior. Want to change? Direct all your heavy artillery at your behavior and target it mercilessly. Routinely, we oversimplify and get hurt in the process.

For most of us, it’s easier to cling to this belief because it gives us the feeling of being in control of the outcome. But dismissing the impact of environment and context on the process of change—and in general—the behavior equation, or considering it a marginal factor, is the main cause for devolution.

Now, imagine if I applied this reasoning to my ficuses: they died because they failed to change their behavior and improve performance to survive.

Deep down, we know the environment is intrinsic to behavior. Hostile life conditions can alter our cognitive abilities. They can make us more susceptible to illnesses, disorders, and self-destructive dynamics like addictions and toxic relationships. In many cases, our environment drives our behavior even more than our personality. So, maybe the struggle to quit doom-scrolling on social media is not because you were born with too little willpower, but because numbing with a constant stream of junk content is a coping mechanism for dealing with a doomed reality. It’s about time to end the decades-long debate about nature vs. nurture because it has always been about nature AND nurture.

According to Lewin, “E” includes all aspects of the person’s environment at the time of any behavior—an external scenery of changeables—like the physical environment, but also their social environment and contexts. Each environment is ultimately different, as it comprises all of an individual’s experiences and feelings, many of which are unique to them.

On the other hand, we have “P”—the inner panorama of the self. It includes the entirety of the person and not only their personality: their past, their present, their expectations of the future, their capabilities, their motivations, their desires.

Lewin offered the construct of the life space to indicate the sum of P and E, as an indissoluble entirety of the person and their environment.

In Lewin’s words, "to understand or predict behavior, the person and their environment have to be considered as one constellation of interdependent factors".

B=f(LS)

When we set out for change, we set out for evolution, but also for bearing with what our life spaces inevitably hold. We aim to maintain a homeostatic-like equilibrium between the experiences that shaped us, the people and ideas we have encountered, our values, beliefs, perceptions, feelings, abilities, skills, norms, rules, connections, positions, belongingness, and relationships. It’s a very hard process, and adding more conflict where awareness, understanding, and compromise are desperately needed can lead to a meltdown.

At the end of the day, our behavior, in all its glorious variety, is a reflection of our life space at a given moment. Always keep an eye on your environment.